Dead Mall
by Mister Pita
Summary: Newcomers to Chicagoland create problems for Harry as well as for the Red and White Courts.
1. Chapter 1

**_Dead Mall._**

**Takes place between _Turn Coat_ and _Changes_.**

Disclaimer: This is not-for-profit FanFiction. The Dresden Files and its non-public domain characters are the creation and property of Jim Butcher. "Chicago," of course, is a totally imaginary place, where anything can happen (especially tpyos).

**Chapter One.**

I was still a few yards away from the mansion when the front door swung open. A young girl bounded out, shouting with high-pitched delight, "Muffin! Muffin! You're back."

Her long black hair bounced around front of her face and the back of her shoulders as she ran towards me. Large brown eyes complimented her cute button nose. She wore a loose white sailor blouse with a wide green collar which was folded down over her shoulders. The ends of a scarf worn mostly beneath the collar were tied together in a bright red bow which rested on the front of her boyish chest. She wore a set of gold colored bracelets on her wrists. A short, green, pleated skirt emphasized her coltish legs, which ended in high white socks and brown loafers.

She open her arms wide as she approached me, and gave another girlish squeal of delight.

Muffin did not return her enthusiasm. In fact, the shih tzu nestled in my arms seemed a bit scared by the shrieking girl, and tried to draw even closer to me. Nevertheless, the little bundle of fur gave no opposition when Kara Kingsland scooped her out of my arms. She turned around and hurried back to her house, while simultaneously kissing and mock-scolding Muffin.

"Muffin-chan, you bad little girl. Why did you run away? You gave us all such a fright. We were so afraid that something bad had happened to you."

By the time we reached the house, Sharon Kingsland was standing at the doorway. As she stepped aside to let girl pass, I noticed that they were exactly equal in height. Otherwise, they were complete opposites.

Kara Kingsland looked, sounded and acted like a typical suburban teenage girl, who just happened to be Asian. Both her face and her body were always in motion during the entire conversation I had with her and her mother two hours earlier. Then she had been expressing worry and concern over her missing pet, begging me to find it, and blaming herself for Muffin's disappearance. Now she was positively bubbling over with joy and happiness. I wondered if she needed Ritalin.

Sharon Kingsland, on the other hand, showed virtually no emotion at Muffin's return. Mrs. Kingsland was an attractive, icy blonde, who could have been cast as the heroine in an Alfred Hitchcock film. She had light blue eyes, flawless ivory-toned skin, with her hair pulled back into a tight, no-nonsense bun. She wore a string of pearls and an expensive navy blue tailored dress suitable for a high-powered corporate executive – which she was. We had spoken two times that day. Each time, her speech was low-toned and deliberately paced.

The first conversation was over the telephone, almost immediately after I entered my office, located in what had previously been a low rent neighborhood of Chicago.

Mrs. Kingsland called to ask me to come to her home in DuPage County and find her daughter's missing dog. When she told me the address, I realized it was in the rich suburbs on the western outskirts of the county, and it would take me at least an hour to drive there. But the end of the month was approaching, and the landlord had just raised my rent – again! I needed office rent money, but finding lost pets usually did not pay very much. I would probably use up almost of my fee simply paying for the gas needed to drive to and back from her house.

When I started to suggest that she get somebody in her locality, she cut me off. She told me that I had a reputation for getting results, and that she needed Muffin found as soon as possible. Then she offered to pay a retainer which would eliminate my rent worries for several months. I did not reply immediately because I was so surprised at the size of her offer. She misinterpreted my delay as a bargaining tactic, and added, "I'll also double that amount if you find and return Muffin before nightfall."

I started to stammer a surprised "okay."

Then she cut me off again, adding, "Also, I'd like your opinion about my house. There is something about it that seems… a bit… peculiar. But we can discuss that in person."

Two hours later I was driving down a mile long driveway and parking my Blue Beetle in front of the Wells mansion. I've learned that there are mansions and MacMansions. They are both big, but mansions are always located on multiple-acre lots, while MacMansions are only found on property measuring one acre or less. The Kingsland mansion was definitely not a MacMansion. Given the size of the property, and the total seclusion created by its surrounding woodlands, most realtors would have upped its ranking to the category of an "old money" mansion.

The main difference, however, concerned the building's architecture. There was a world of difference between the mock Tudor architecture of a MacMansion and the real Tudor architecture of a real mansion. The Kingsland mansion displayed real Tudor architecture. I've seen some mock Tudor MacMansions which were more than twice this one, but they were obviously MacMansions, whereas this one's outside wooden beams and overhanging second floor sowed it was the real McCoy.

The only discordant notes were a small satellite dish, discretely placed beside one of the mansion two chimneys, and a pair of stone lions crouching on low pedestals flanking the entrance way. At first glance, I thought they were miniature, man-sized versions of the two lions on the pedestals at the stairs in front of the New York City Public Library.

At second glance, I saw some differences. Each had its mane combed back to meet at point behind the head, as well as two small, backward slanting horns which merged with each side of the mane. Each lion sported a Fu Manchu type moustache, which did little to hide the long fangs protruding each snarling mouth. Also, the body behind the mane was covered with scales, rather than fur. I could tell whether the statues had been carved from stone or made from a poured-concrete cast.

My attention shifted to the mansion's oaken door. It looked thick and heavy, but I did not need to touch its dark, wrought iron handle or knocker. Instead, it was easily pushed open by a young teenage girl, who looked like she had just been crying.

"Mister Dresden? You are Harry Dresden, aren't you? I'm Kara Kingsland and we really need your help." She came up to me and grabbed both of my hands.

"Please, please help us find Muffin," she pleaded. She began to cry, and I heard muffled sobs as she leaned her face against my shoulder.

She was a very young, and very cute kid, who looked very, very sad. Part of me wanted to give her a big hug and tell her not to worry, and that everything would be okay. But I didn't, mainly because of the mild stench of demon that wafted out of the mansion's open doorway.

While I was standing there, trying to figure out what to do, a corporate executive type woman walked into the doorway.

"Kagome" she said sharply, "Mister Dresden will not be able to assist us, until he knows the all the facts, and has had sufficient time to evaluate them and then plan the optimal course of action. Allow him to enter, so we can describe our problem." She spoke like a corporate executive addressing a table of not particularly bright subordinates, using a laser pointer to emphasize each step listed on the screen of her PowerPoint presentation.

"Yes, mother," said Kara wearily. I suspected that she used that phrase a lot. She let go of my hands, turned around and slowly trudged back into the house.

"Mr. Dresden, I am Mrs. Sharon Kingsland. We spoke earlier. You've already met my daughter Kagome. Please come in."

I did not move. I just stood there, closely observing Mrs. Sharon Kingsland. Examining her, trying to determine how she might be related to the stench of demon coming from the house. Whether or not she might be a demon. Whether the mansion might be a trap. But when Kara had grabbed my hands, I did not sense anything about her that was like a demon, or even a human warlock. Kara was simply a sad, young, ordinary girl.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Kingsland was examining me back. She saw a tall man in his late 30s, well ver six feet tall, who had a two day old stubble of brown beard and needed a haircut. I was wearing a black leather duster, which covered a black tee shirt and blue jeans. I wore cowboy boots, and a black leather glove covered by left hand, like some Bizarro World version of Michael Jackson. If I had appeared unannounced at her doorway, she would have probably called the cops. But she was the one who had invited me over.

After a minute of mutual staring, Sharon Kingsland glanced over her shoulder to see how far Kara and Muffin had gone into the house. Her next words were in a much lower voice, which neither would not be able to hear.

"So, you can also sense something."

I nodded.

"Thank God. That means I am not going crazy. There's something bad about this place. We have a problem, something much more important than Muffin."

I nodded again.

"Please do come in," she implored, "so we can talk. Please."

I surmised that it had been a long time since Sharon had had to say "please" in a sincere manner, and that it took her a lot of effort to do so now. I also decided she that did not represent a threat. As I entered, she muttered, "I should have realized there was something wrong with this place, when the sellers accepted my first offer, and then insisted upon an early closing."

Inside, sitting on their plush green living room sofa, Sharon and Kara told me about a bit about themselves. Sharon was a widow and Kara was her adopted Japanese-American daughter. They had recently moved to Chicago after Sharon was promoted to become the new Executive VP of a major corporation.

Kara, however, did most of the talking¸ especially after Sharon excused herself to make an important business call. Mostly Kara talked about Muffin, who was the most adorable dog in the world. He had been missing since early morning, and Kara was certain he had been dog-napped and/or eaten by a wolf, and that whatever happened would be her fault. I only half listened while Kara talked, and focused most of my attention on trying identify the stench. It was definitely demon, but unlike anything I had ever come across.

I absent-mindedly nodded in agreement, the few times when Kara occasionally paused to catch her breath.

Kara eventually ran completely out of breath and stopped talking, I asked if Muffin's fur had been brushed recently, and then asked to see the brush. While Kara ran off to get the brush, I looked at Sharon, who had returned from her phone call.

"Kara's nearly hysterical," she said. "Find the dog first, and then we'll talk about the house when you return."

Kara returned holding a small, expensive looking, dog brush. It had a dark mahogany handle, stainless steel bristles, and – most importantly - large tufts of light brown fur. As far as finding the dog was concerned, no problem. As far as handling the house was concerned, almost certainly a big problem. But first things first.

I took the fur-filled brush outside to my car, and used the silver pentacle amulet I wear on a slender chain around my neck to cast a simple Finding Spell. Muffin was not that far away, somewhere beyond the cluster of evergreen trees to the right of the house. Sharon and Kara watched me from the doorway.

I pointed to the right, and asked, "What's over there, behind the trees?"

"It's the park," said Kara. "Is that where Muffin is?

"Our property ends just a few yards beyond the tree line," said Kara. "After that lies the Illinois Nature Conservancy. The state owns about fifteen square miles of forest, prairie and wetlands. It's open to the public and there are hiking trails." She pointed to a spot where the forest seemed to open a bit. "You'll find the blazes of one of the main trails if you go through that gap."

"Thanks. I'll be back soon."

The land sloped upward in that direction. I got my staff out of the car, using it as a hiking stick as I headed up towards the trees.

I went a three yards through the trees and found the trail. It looked like an ordinary gravel covered fire trail, but it was marked by tin can lids pained with blue squares of paint, The trail markers were nailed on to the sides of trees at eye level, one about every 10 yards. I was started to sweat, and began to question my decision not to leave my black leather duster in the car. Fortunately, the finding spell led me in the same direction as the trail, which soon sloped downhill. The trail crossed over a brief patch of meadows, where the blue squares were painted onto small rocks, and further on it curved around another clump of trees.

I slowed my pace with I heard someone approaching. A young jogger came around the curve, heading toward me. He wore white running shoes, denim cut offs, and a maroon hoodie bearing the name and insignia of the University of Chicago. The hood was down, and also he had on a maroon baseball cap. He was about 15 or 20 years younger than me, probably in his final year of college or just starting graduate school. He did not look like a threat. In fact, he looked like he could have been Kara's older brother, or cousin.

The jogger was wearing an ipod, and completely focused upon its music and staring at his feet. He did not notice me until he was a few yards away. When he raised his eyes, he looked startled and momentarily lost his pace. He looked at me like I appeared threatening, or at least something to be wary of. I couldn't blame him. The people who used Nature Conservancy trails usually did not wear black leather dusters. The jogger regained his pace, and swerved over to the far side of the trail. We nodded to each other, as he went past me.

A few seconds later, I heard him stop. I turned around as he called out to me.

"Excuse me, sir." The last word made me feel old, but I smiled and gave him an inquisitive nod.

"This might sound like an odd question," he continued," but, by any chance, do you happen to be looking for a lost dog?"

Bingo!

"As a matter of fact," I answered, "yes, I am. A small brown shih tzu. Have you seen it?"

He looked relieved, and said, "Yes. It's over by the stream, just beyond this clump of trees, to the left. Its leash is caught between two rocks. It doesn't look hurt, but you can't tell if anything has rabies, so I didn't want to get too close. I left my cell phone in my car, and was going to call the Nature Conservancy as soon as got to the parking lot." He kept jogging in place while he spoke to me. "Since it's your dog, now I guess I don't have to."

I decided not to correct him about the ownership, and just said "Thanks."

"Have a nice day," he said, as he turned around and continued his jogging. We were both happy. He had done a good deed, and I was very close to finishing the easy part of this case.

I continued on the trail as it curved around the trees, and immediately saw the stream. It was about thirty feet away from the trail. It's wide gully was about ten feet lower than the trail, at the bottom of a slope which was strewn with small rocks. I also saw a little bundle of brown fur lying down near a group of larger rocks beside the steam.

"Hello, Muffin. Goodbye, rent problems," I said to myself.

Cowboy boots are not the best footwear for trail hiking, much less for descending a rocky hillside. I went down the hill very slowly, placing my feet perpendicular to my line of descent. I occasionally slipped on the loose stones and nearly lost my balance, but was able to steady myself with my staff. The angle of descent leveled off when I was about ten yards away from Muffin, so I started to walk in a normal fashion as I approached her.

Muffin did not look injured, just tired. She barely looked up as I approached her, and did not bark. She had on a leash, whose end was wedged between two of the rocks. I considered the possibility of dehydration, but the area was cool and well shaded and her leash was long enough to allow her to lap water from the stream. All I would have to do would be to untangle the leash and bring her home. The mansion itself was another problem, but at least I solved Kara's problem. And soon I'd have enough money to solve my landlord troubles. It was like several weeks' rent had been handed to me on a silver platter.

"Piece of cake," I exclaimed - and then went flying backwards and slammed my back against the ground.

I began scanning the forest, even before I caught my breath, or began feeling the hurt from the fall. Fortunately, my duster had absorbed most of the impact.

I looked back and forth, up and down, but saw nothing resembling enemy or any hostile movement. There was no sign of any sound or movement whatsoever, other than the breezy rustling of the leaves and the gurgling of the brook. Even Muffin had not moved. There did not appear to be any reason to scramble for cover.

My gaze shifted down to a small flat rock, lying near my feet. Its bottom was moss covered, while its top was clean. That meant it had just been turned over. I knew that If I looked at the sole of my cowboy book, it would be smeared with crushed clumps of flattened, slippery moss. I mentally slapped my forehead and said to myself, "Stupid Rookie Mistake!"

While keeping my eyes on Muffin, I had failed to watch where I had been placing my feet.

My mind flashed back to a conversation I had a few weeks ago in McAnally's pub with Arnie Jackson. He was a short and wiry Phys Ed Major in his final year at Loyola University. He kept his head shaved completely bald. That evening, like almost every other time I saw him, he was wearing a striped black and white referee's shirt. Loyola had given him a sports scholarship, and in addition to being on the hockey team he worked as an assistant to the coach.

He also spent a lot of his free time counseling troubled kids, teaching some the ones at Juvenile Hall how to control their anger and channel their energies into basketball, boxing, and other socially-acceptable forms of aggression.

Arnie's real passion, however, was focused on his equally wiry girlfriend Dianne, a redheaded sophomore at Loyola, and mountain climbing – not necessarily in that order. A week ago, the two of them had left for a two week climbing vacation at Yosemite National Park. Four days later, I saw Arnie sitting at the pub, his left foot was encased by a white plaster cast. When I asked what had happened, I expected to hear a story about how his rope had snapped apart rubbing against the edge of a sharp rock, or he had fallen down the side of a cliff while trying to save Dianne's life. Instead, Arnie just looked embarrassed and said, "stupid rookie mistake."

He told me how he and Dianne had intended to climb the northwest face of Half Dome, which Arnie had done once, two years earlier. That side of the mountain is a flat wall of granite which rises straight up for almost a mile. The climb takes two days. Climbers start early in the morning, and with luck, reach the middle of the mountain by sunset. At that point, they make camp. "Making camp" on Half Dome is different than making camp on Mount Everest. You don't need any Sherpas to help carry and pitch your tents, because you have no tents. The ledges on that side of Half Dome are only a few inches wide, so there isn't room for any tents. Each climber's backpack contains a sleeping bag and a Portaledge, essentially a legless cot with lots of straps. Making camp on Half Dome consists of securing the portaledge straps to hooks jammed into cracks on the rock face, eating a few granola bars, and then crawling out onto the swaying cot. Then, still wearing all his clothes, the climber wiggles into his sleeping bag and hooks it to the remaining unused Portaledge straps. Overnight rock climbing is not a good sport for people who toss and turn in their sleep,

"Once in a while I managed to nod off," Arnie told me after he returned from his first visit to Yosemite, "but each time I woke up with a start, after having a horrible nightmare. I kept dreaming that I was hanging over a vast void with only a tiny patch of canvas stopping me from falling thousands of feet to my death. Then, when I started to get fully awake, I realized that it wasn't just a dream. It was for real."

But Arnie did not fall off the cliff. At the first light of day, he and his climbing buddies had wiggled out of their bedding, eaten a few more granola bars, and made it to the top by afternoon. Nobody who climbs up Half Dome ever descends via the same route. They are too exhausted and half-asleep. Fortunately, the other side of Half Dome is a bulging curve which turns into a traditional wooded mountainside. Descending via the hiking trail takes only a few hours. But even that trail can be also be dangerous, because it is littered with loose rocks and it is easy to slip. But everyone, however sleep deprived, is aware of the danger. They focus all their attention on where to place their feet, each step of the way down.

"My accident happened the day after Dianne and I arrived at Yosemite," Arnie told me at McAnally's. "We couldn't do any real climbing that day because of the weather forecast. It was very cloudy with the chance of an evening thunderstorm. Nobody starts climbing Half Dome if there is any chance of rain."

"We used that day, instead, for some light hiking. We spent the morning on one of the baby-level trails leading past Sentinel Falls. It has very gradual slopes, but, like every other trail at Yosemite, it is covered with loose rocks. It is easy to slip and fall if you do not pay attention to every step you take. When we reached a good spot to view the falls, we stopped for lunch and spent more than an hour, just sitting and watching the water. Then we headed back in the late afternoon. I felt very relaxed and contented as we came to the bottom of the trail's final hill."

He paused for another sip of beer.

"Just as we reached the end of the trail," he continued, "the clouds parted, and there was a beautiful sunset off to my left. For one stupid instant I glanced over there during mid-stride, without examining exactly where I was placing my foot. Because I wasn't watching my foot, it landed on a loose rock. As the weight of my body shifted onto that foot, the rock went one way, my foot went the other way, and my ankle went 'crack.'" He took a final sip of his beer. "Fortunately, there was a Park Ranger Station just beyond the end of the trail. They immediately called for Medical, and I got the cast put on in less than an hour."

"Harry," he continued, as though giving a lecture to a group of his kids, "contrary to what people might think, mountain climbing is not a dangerous sport - if done properly. The fact is, most accidents happen after the climb is over. During the climb, you are completely focused on the mountain and on finding the safest footholds and handholds. Everything else in the world disappears from your mind. You think of nothing else –nothing!"

"That is big part of the attraction of climbing. It is physically demanding, but it is great cardio-vascular work, and you can be rewarded with views of literally breath-taking scenery. But you have to stay completely focused, for every single second. The only time when you can temporarily relax and drop your guard is when you are sitting down on a stable, flat spot on the top of the mountain. Then you can just totally clear your mind and enjoy the view."

"The very best thing is to climb up somewhere you can spend the night. In the right season, with the right weather, you don't even use the tent. You just lie there in your sleeping bag, staring up at the stars. You're high above all the urban haze, so it's like you can see every single star in all the constellations. You feel like you are at the top of the world, and if you reach your hand up, you can touch the Milky Way. You simply lie there, gazing at the stars and their constellations until you fall asleep."

"All the other time on the trail, any trail, every trail, you need to stay completely focused - even while going up and going down the easiest of slopes. The most dangerous part of a climb or a hike is always at the end, just when you start to think it's over, but there are still a few loose rocks lying in your path." He paused to drain the last inch of beer in his mug.

"Because the Sentinel Trail slope had leveled off, the conscious part of my mind stupidly assumed the hike was over. I let down my guard one minute too early," he said in an embarrassed manner. "Like a said, it was a stupid rookie mistake."

I could only add, "As Lenny Kravitz put it, 'It ain't over til it's over.'" Arnie nodded.

I was ready to head back home, so I waved at the bartender. I may have rent problems, but I also had an income, albeit small and sporadic. Arnie was a scholarship student who did pro bono work at Juvie Hall. I paid for both of our tabs, and headed out of the pub before he could object.

"Stupid rookie mistake," I said to Muffin, who was still just lying there, looking at me. As I got up, I felt my left ankle throb. It wasn't broken, or even sprained, but it still hurt. I hobbled over to Muffin, bent down and let her smell the palm of my hand. I petted her a few times and scratched the top of her head. She didn't seem to be very interested in anything I did. No blood, and any other sign of injury.

I untangled Muffin's leash and we started back. She followed behind me as I slowly made my way back up to the trail. I was glad I had brought my staff. Once I got to the trail, I picked Muffin up and carried her in my arms as I limped the rest of the way back to the mansion.

Once Kara saw Muffin, she became oblivious to everyone and everything else, but Sharon noticed my limp.

"Are you injured?" she asked.

"A little hurt, but not injured. I can still play the rest of the game, coach." Sharon either did not get the joke, or did not think it was funny.

The two stone lions which flanked the entrance, however, seemed to now have big smiles on their faces.

"Let's go into the study, Sharon said. I'll write you a check for you finding my dog, and we can concentrate on the real problem." She strided across the living room towards a doorway on the right. Her study was small and intimate by mansion standards, and about three times the size of my office. It was dominated by a large mahogany desk, with a giant appointment blotter placed precisely at its center. Matching bookcases and armoires lined its green walls. I saw one security camera; there were probably more. After I entered and could see more of the room, my eyes were drawn to a large globe of the world perched on a stainless steel base to the left of the desk. The globe was enormous, at least five feet in diameter. It was a raised relief globe, whose surface replicated both the height of mountains and the depths of ocean trenches. The study contained a mild stench of demon was a bit stronger than in the living room, and slightly different, as if someone had added a whiff of rotting fish.

Sharon sat down on a large, over-stuffed dark brown leather chair behind the desk. She told me, "You did your job. At least, you did the first part," and pointed at the stack of money on the right hand corner of the desk. "Here's your fee for finding Muffin. Take it and then we can discuss the real problem."

As I limped over to the table, Sharon added, "It's still daylight, so this includes the bonus."

My sense of the increased demon stench was temporarily overwhelmed by my feeling of joy and relief, one similar what I felt when I first saw Muffin. "Hello, retainer; goodbye, rent problems," I said to myself. My landlord worries were solved for the next few months, and by one of my easiest jobs, ever.

"Piece of cake," I said to myself.

I leaned forward and reached for the money. Some subconscious part of my brain, however, made me reach for the money with my left hand, even though the money was on the right side of the table. With my hand only inches above the money, I paused. The conscious part of my brain kicked in and noted the fact that I was unexpectedly using my left hand, rather than my right hand. In a tenth of a split-second, the conscious part of my brain asked the subconscious part: Are you trying to tell me something?

During the next tenth of a spit-second, my conscious brain received and processed the subconscious' reply, which were memories of me saying "Piece of cake," as I had approached Muffin and then went flying over backwards. The mental image started fading, and was replace by an image of the interior of McAnally's showing a speeded up replay of my conversation with Arnie. He was pointing at his cast and saying "stupid rookie mistake," "stupid rookie mistake," over and over.

This image faded out and was followed by another image, of a desert landscape with a city like Las Vegas. The buildings all had large illuminated signs, with flashing neon red lights. All the signs had the same message: "Stupid Rookie Mistake! Stupid Rookie Mistake!"

Then in my mind I began ascending, rising slowly at first, and then rapidly. I soared northeast across the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains. I began to slow down a bit when Lake Michigan came into view, and started on a final descent toward Chicago.

Suddenly my view of Chicago halted, and I began to rise again. It was as if a flight controller – or a hijacker - had ordered my subconscious had to change direction. But I was not being redirected into a holding pattern, or ordered to fly to Havana. I simply rose straight up, faster and faster. The horizon changed from a flat line to a gentle curve, then a sharp curve, and finally part of the diameter of a big circle.

I was now floating high above the earth, which now looked the size of the globe in the study.

At first the image of the earth was overwhelmed by the galaxy of bright stars in the background. I orientated myself by looking at the Milky Way, and then hunting for the North Star. I found Polaris, but its constellation's stars had moved around a bit. The Big Bear was now standing upright, and had much longer hair. He looked a lot like Bigfoot, one of my occasional clients whom I call River Shoulders. This one's giant hairy head, however, was topped by a pair of short horns, and he was holding a hammer and chisel. Most of the other constellations were also changed. Some still formed relatively normal images, like a giraffe with the horn of a unicorn, and some images were very un-normal, things that looked like the result of mixing the DNA of a whale and a tarantula.

I examined the constellations which curved around the Zodiac elliptic. Aries had lost its horns and shrunk into a shih tzu, while Taurus had kept his and had expanded into a dragon. The Gemini were now a shark and a mermaid, entwined in what was definitely a non-fraternal embrace. Cancer's central carapace had grown and expanded, making it resemble a turtle. Virgo had sprouted wings to become a phoenix, rising out of a bonfire set in the bottom half of a giant oyster.

My attention was drawn to Leo, who had exchanged his feline form for a simian one. That made me wary. Several years ago, during the case when I acquired Mouse, my now-enormous pet dog, I also acquired a strong aversion to monkeys. I especially disliked ones which sported wings and threw clumps of flaming poop at me. The monkey version of Leo in the Milky Way, however, did not have wings. It must have still been king of the jungle, because there was a jeweled crown on its head. One of its hands grasped a golden scepter about the size of my blasting rod, while the other held a spear which came up to its shoulder.

The line of stars forming its mouth were arranged in a pattern which could be interpreted as either a Mona Lisa smile or a smart aleck smirk – same difference.

As I studied the monkey's face, two stars in the middle both turned into supernovas, creating the impression of startled eyes opening wide. Several more stars appeared at both ends of its mouth, turning its sardonic grin into a big, happy smile. Then a cloud of black matter briefly passed between me and one of the supernova eyes, making it disappear and then immediately reappear.

The monkey king had smiled at me and winked.

My subconscious must have received permission to land, because I began falling back down towards the earth. My entire field of vision was soon totally taken up by the image of the earth as I plummeted down - towards North America, towards Illinois, towards the edge of Lake Michigan, towards the center of Chicago. I slowed down as I descended toward Federal Plaza, and came to a gentle stop standing upon the top of Andrew Calder's vermillion Flamingo sculpture.

I looked down at North Dearborn Street and could see thousands, no, make that tens of thousands of people marching north towards me in what at first appeared to be a giant Von Steuben Day Parade. At the head of the parade, however, was a massive float, containing a model of the Kingsland mansion constructed out of chrysanthemums. In front of the mansion were a dozen beautiful young Asian women wearing kimonos, sarongs, hula skirts, saris and cheongsams. They all danced and writhed in a circle around Lenny Kravitz, who belted out an amplified, jazzed-up version of "It Ain't Over Til It's Over."

The float was followed by loud marching bands, fire trucks spurting streams of water up into the air, and innumerable marchers carrying giant banners, all with the same message: "STUPID ROOKIE MISTAKE! STUPID ROOKIE MISTAKE! STUPID ROOKIE MISTAKE!"

The scene started to fade away in anticipation of the next message coming in from subconscious central. Then the conscious part of my brain shouted, "Okay. I get it. I'm overconfident, and I'm overlooking something important – and dangerous." The subconscious part of my brain signaled back, "Finally!," and signed off.

All of this took less than half of a split-second, while my left hand still hovered over the stack of cash. Sharon noticed the slight pause and said, "Go ahead. Take the money." Then she smiled, laughed lightly and said, "It's not going to bite you."

Sharon Kingsland made a joke. Even without anything else to go on, that told me there was definitely something wrong.

Then I discovered that Sharon wasn't making a joke.

She was telling a lie.

The money actually did try to bite me.

The stack of dollars morphed into a solid rectangle, which then further morphed into a bar of jade-green slime. I automatically started to pull back my hand, but tentacles leapt out of the top of the bar and began entwining my fingers and wrist. They avoided my shield bracelet, however, after the first green tendril which touched it dissolved into a puff of smoke. Meanwhile other tentacles began oozing from the bottom of the bar, wrapping themselves around the edges of the desk. When I tried to draw back from the desk, the jade-green tentacles began to pull me forward. Sharon's original light chuckle also began changing, into a loud, deep, rumbling laugh.

The room's sickening stench of demon became overwhelming. I decided I'd better look up to see what new form Sharon Kingsland was morphing into. Even before my eyes lifted up enough to see what was now on the other side of the desk, the conscious part brain told me told me that it was going to be something very, very bad.

Simultaneously, the unconscious part of my brain sent a message to the conscious part: "Told you so! Told you so!"

Sharon, or whatever demon had used the shape of Sharon, had overturned the chair, and expanded into something twice Sharon's size. As I watched, ivory toned skin was replaced green reptilian scales, and a third eye opened up in the middle of her forehead. Her nose and mouth were expanding forwards into a snout that belonged to an alligator or a dragon.

She, or he, or it was still wearing a necklace. The pearls, however, had been transformed into a string of small skulls. Each one was about the size of my fist.

Sharon-Demon laughed while I twisted my left arm and vigorously shook my hand, trying to extract it from the green tentacles. The rapid movement of my arm and shoulder opened my duster, and I was grateful that it was my left hand – rather than my right hand – being encased with the demon version of superglue. I was thankful because this allowed my right hand to have immediate access to blasting rod inside my duster.

"You're welcome," whispered the subconscious portion of my brain.

I pulled out my blasting rod and pointed it at the demon. It had stopped laughing and was now beginning a deep inhale. I suspected that something bad would happen when he exhaled. My initial plan was to beat him to the punch by shooting a fireball at him before he could exhale.

I pointed my blasting rod at the demon and was about to say "fuego," but then I noticed something. Although the demon was still inhaling, the corner of its mouth had curved up to form the demon version of a big smile. In addition, I noticed a light blue aura shimmering out of the scales on the front of its body. The hue was nearly identical to that of the protective force field I could create with my shield bracelet.

Instead of uttering the spell for a giant fireball, I glanced into the demon's glowing red eyes. Demons did not have souls, so I could not perform a soulgaze. But looking into the demon's eyes, I detected something akin to a feeling of strong satisfaction and the joy of imminent victory. Although I had unexpectedly reached for the money with, and entangled in demon superglue, my left hand, the demon's force field would still protect it from anything I could throw at it with my blasting rod. In fact, the scales' blue protective aura would probably reflect my own fireball back at me, along with the demon's fireball. In another few second Harry Dresden would be literally toast.

I sensed the demon emanate a self-congratulatory message, equivalent to "check and mate."

"It ain't over til it's over," I muttered, and shifted the end of the rod downward.

The rod now pointed at the top of the bar of slime, to the base root of the tentacles holding my left hand. I had already formed the details of the fireball spell in my mind. Now I altered them slightly, and shouted "fuego." Instead of a big wide fireball, a relatively small burst came blasting out of my rod. It sliced off the base of the tentacles holding onto my hand, and they immediately dissolved into puffs of green smoke. I immediately raised by left hand, held it at a point directly between me and the demon, and shouted "defendarious," just as the demon started to exhale at me.

All of the twisting and shaking I had performed while trying to extract my left hand from the tentacles had generated an enormous amount of kinetic energy, some of which had been transferred to the shield bracelet. The bracelet's protective force field became effective immediately. As I had hoped, the flames which burst out of the demon's mouth was stopped by my shield and reflected back at him. But the demon flames were more than a simple fire ball. It was more like a continuous flow of burning phosphorous coming out of a flame-resistant, high-pressure firehouse.

As the firestream continued to blast against my protective shield, I noticed the shield began to bend slightly and then shrink. I felt the temperature rise.

I did not know how long my protective shield could repel such powerful magic, so I hastily improvised a Plan B. I used my right hand to button up my duster and raise its thick collar all around along my neck and lower face. As I completed that task, I noticed the firestream losing force, and then dwindle down to a thin glowing drizzle simply falling at the desk.

Meanwhile, the demon, although obviously out of breath, still smiling. I realized why, when I felt something touch my left wrist and I looked down. Although the firestream's backdraft had burnt up most of the desk, the corner containing the green slime brick had been on my side of the shield and was unharmed. Now the green brick was sending out another set of tentacles which again fastened around my left hand, and slammed it to the desk. Most of the bottom tentacles which had been wrapped around the edges and bottom of the desk slid up and wrapped themselves further around my lower arm. The left side of my body was pulled down against the corner of the desk. This made the protective shield disappear.

The demon started to inhale again. It opened its snout, and every other second it rasped in a huge volume of air. Each time, its stomach grew a bit larger, and the protective blue shimmer across the front of its body grew stronger.

Time for the second part of Plan B. I twisted my body enough to lift my right arm and point my blasting rod at the demon's belly. I uttered "fuega." Since I had not mentally triggered the spell, nothing happen. I shook the rod of few times and shouted "fuegum." Again, nothing happened, except that the demon became more and more confident, and it's smile and inhalations grew larger. It must have assumed that either the rod was broken, or that I was too befuddled to cast a proper spell. In any case, it knew that its scales' own permanent protective shield would repel any fireball back onto me.

I waited, looking scared – which was very, very easy – until the demon spread its snout completely open, at the height of its final inhalation. Beyond rows of sharp pointed teeth, the interior of its mouth was vibrant blood red. The rear of the mouth was becoming increasingly yellowish by the flames building in its stomach.

As the demon was nearly finishing its final exhalation, I felt its third eye emanate the demon-language equivalent of, "Piece of cake!"

"Not yet," I muttered, as I raised by right hand and pointed my blasting rod directly at the center of the demon's wide open mouth.

"Fuego!" I shouted. The rod's blast was already set up to expel the small fireball I had used to sever the base of the tentacle. Now,the rod rapidly shot out three similarly sized concentrated blasts straight into the demon's wide open mouth. The first mini-fireball hit the layer of viscous mucus which protects interior muscles of the demon's throat from being burned by its own firestream. That firestream usually rises along the demon's throat in a rapid, uninterrupted flow, parallel to the interior of the throat, like water squirting through a hose. It does not really stay in any place long enough to evaporate much mucus. My three fireballs, however, hit the same place at the back of the throat in a straight on trajectory. The first perpendicular hit evaporated most of the mucus covering the target spot. The second mini-fireball burnt up a mixture of mucus and throat muscle. The third fireball disintegrated that spot's remaining muscle, and part of the scales covering the back of the demon's neck.

As a final touch, I moved my rod in a quick horizontal back-and-forth movement. This time I shot off six more mini-fireballs. Three fireballs hit each interior corner of the demon's still wide-open mouth, severing the jaw muscles which were holding up the top of the demon's long snout.

Just as the upcoming flamestream changed the color of the interior of the demon's mouth to a bright yellow hue, the heavy top half of the demon's snout swung down and its mouth slammed shut.

Once created and set in motion, all fire, even magic fire, follows the same physical laws. A moving fireball, or firestream, follows the path of least resistance. Ordinarily, the demon's firestream rose up through its throat, were deflected horizontally by the smooth, mucus-covered curve at the back of its palate and were expelled through its open mouth.

This time, however, the demon's mouth was closed, and there there was a gaping hole in the muscles at the back of its throat.

The demon lost its jubilant expression as it realized its plans had gone wrong. Its cheeks began to bulge, and it desperately raised up its clawed hands. His arms, however, were short, like those of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. They were long enough to grab prey and carry it up to an open mouth. They were not long enough to grab its upper jaw and push open its snout.

The part of its head behind the snout doubled in size, and the scales at the back of its neck inflated into a rapidly expanding balloon. Then both its eyeballs popped out of its head, like the wolf in the Tex Avery cartoon.

It was time for me to adopt bomb shelter mode.

My left hand was still fastened to the desk by the green tentacles, so I could not use my protective shield. Instead, I shifted my left shoulder a little and leaned onto my desk, making the cuff of my duster cover my exposed wrist. This movement made my upper arm and chest come into contract with the green slime, but I figured that that was still better than exposing any uncovered part of my body to a fiery explosion.

I then did my best turtle imitation, scrunching down my neck, so most of my head withdrew between the upraised collar of my duster. I crossed my right arm over the exposed top of my head, so my hair was covered and my duster-protected elbow was pointing toward the demon. Finally I tucked my bare right hand under my left armpit, and closed my eyes.

My ears were covered by the duster's collar, so I felt, rather than heard, the explosion. Fortunately, most of what I felt was a tremendous burst of air, rather than heat and flame.

My ears were still ringing when I opened my eyes to see the damage. It looked like my plan had worked. On the other side of the desk, the wall and ceiling were covered with flames, although the security camera at the corner of the ceiling looked only slightly scorched. The smoldering remains of what had been the demon's head was lying on several feet away from its inert body. Virtually all of the firestream had burst up and to the back.

As I tried to rise, I realized that my left hand and part of the left side of my duster were still stuck to the desk. The demon's death, however, must have decreased the slime bar's power, because the tentacles' grasp was noticeably weaker. It was now more like an extra sticky batch of Silly Putty rather than superglue. I managed to pull the front of my duster away from the desk, took a few deep breaths, and aimed my blasting rod at the center of the slime bar.

I also wondered how Kara fitted into this. Was she another demon and part of the trap, or simply an unsuspecting, innocent bystander? Before I could blast the bar of slime, I heard Kara's footsteps behind me as she came running into the room, and a surprised high-pitched scream, "Oh no! This can't be happening. No! No!"

I started to move my evaluation of her towards "innocent bystander."

Then I heard the sound of wood clicking against wood. The peripheral vision at the outer sides of both my eyes saw two hands descend on either side of my head. Each hand clasped a short wooden stick connected to the ends of a long thin metal wire, covered with tiny bits of light-sparkling matter. I decided to change my evaluation of Kara to "second demon," and to put that in her personal record.

As the wire closed around my neck, I sensed Kara's hands crossing over each other, and felt her knee pressing against the small of my back. She pulled the garrote closed with so much power, that the top of my body above her knee was levered away from the desk and most of the green tentacles snapped apart. If my neck had been unprotected, my head would have been completely severed from my body. If I had been wearing only a traditional leather jacket, its protective value against the carborundum -coated wire would have equaled that of a soft bar of butter.

The collar protecting my neck, however, was part of a magical duster. It muted the impact of Susie's garrote, so my neck felt only a mild pressure. I felt like if I was wearing a shirt with too small a neck size.

Although the palm of my left hand was fastened to the desk, my right hand was still holding the blasting rod. I swung my arm across my chest, and poked the blasting end into the Kara-demon's stomach.

Just on the verge of saying the blasting spell, I thought to myself, "Finally, a piece of cake." Immediately, part of my conscious brain and my entire subconscious brain both began screaming, "Stupid rookie mistake. Stupid rooking mistake."

As long as Kara was only trying to garrote me, and my neck was covered by my duster's collar, I was relatively safe. I could take a minute to evaluate the situation.

I was being strangled by a demon with a garrote. Why was a demon trying to kill me by strangling me with a garrote. That was something that any human could do. Why wasn't the demon instead blasting me with fireball or some other supernatural weapon? Had it decided upon a suicide mission, and its belly was filled with acid, or explosives? Maybe it thought it was so close that the blast would overwhelm the protection my duster gave me? Maybe.

But also, why had the earlier blast demolished most of the wall and ceiling behind the Sharon-demon, but left the security camera on the wall almost unharmed? It was possible that I was still being recorded.

I turned my head enough to look at the Kara-demon's face. It still looked like Kara, albeit a quite a bit older than a young teenager. The minute she saw my face turning towards her, she immediately closed her eyes tight shut, and re-doubled her effort to tighten the garrote.

"Wait a minute," I said to myself. "Why should a demon be afraid of a wizard staring into its eyes? Wizards can only soul gaze humans."

Then it hit me. Kara was not something relatively harmless, like a demon with a belly full of acid or explosives. She was something much, much more dangerous. She was a human.

Kara was a human that I on the verge of killing, using magic, in front of a security camera. I was certain that the security cameras in the room were giving a live feed to someone outside the house. I was equally certain that immediately after my magic killed Kara, the White Council would receive a recording of the event. Less than 24 hours later, a Warden of the White Council wielding a large sword would have me join the Sharon-demon as answers in the $500 Jeopardy category: "Things whose heads have been separated from their bodies."

Kara's eyes were still shut when I twisted my body enough to send my right elbow into her stomach. She gasped for air, let go of the garrote and dropped her knee from my back. This gave me the chance to raise my right foot against her stomach and send her flying across the room. She smashed into the wall next to one of the armoires, and slid down to the floor.

I thought that the impact would have knocked her out, but she thought differently. She sat up, raised her right arm, and pointed her finger at my face.

"That can't be good," I said to myself, shifted my body to the right, just as Kara jiggled her right hand bracelet . I hear a soft "phfft," and felt something strike, but not penetrate, the left chest of my duster. I looked down, and saw small dart stick out of the duster, with a clear liquid dribbling down from the site of impact. I did not know exactly what the liquid was, but was willing to bet the house that it was something very bad.

I shifted my attention back to Kara, who was starting to raise her up her left wrist.

"Didn't anybody ever teach you that it's impolite to point?" I asked as I aimed my blasting rod at the legs of the armoire next to her and shouted "fuego." Two of the armoire's legs disappeared in a small fiery blast, and the rest of it toppled over onto Kara. The sound of its crash included several snapping sounds, which indicated broken legs, ribs, and/or arms.

My immediate feeling was fear that the armoire's crash might have killed Kara. Since I had used magic to cause the armoire's fall, the White Council would still find me guilty of using magic to kill a human – a capital offense.

But I was lucky. Kara was still alive. The fallen armoire began to move, as she began pushing it away from her. Her legs were undoubtedly crushed, and her left shoulder, the one leading down to the left wrist containing the loaded wrist bracelet, was clearly dislocated. Her right arm, however, was still strong enough to push the armoire enough to make room for her to maneuver her upper body.

Kara used her right hand to pick up her limp left hand, and tried to raise it enough up to aim the bracelet's poisoned dart at me. As she lifted her left hand high enough to aim at my stomach, the jagged ends of her broken left forearm began poking through her skin. She tried to raise her left hand up higher, for a shot at my unprotected face. The jagged bones sliced through her forearm muscles, making it impossible for right hand to lift her left hand any higher or hold it steady enough make a decent shot. She let go of her left hand, and slumped back against the wall.

I looked over my shoulder at the security camera and said, "She takes a licking, but she keeps on ticking." The phrase sounded a lot less sleazy in the old Timex Watch commercials.

I searched my mind for spells which might improve Kara's health enough to make sure she stayed alive, but not so much that she regained enough strength to attack me again. I decided that, for now, sleep – or, more precisely, the dormius spell - would be the best medicine. Especially since the study was filling up with smoke and flame in the aftermath of the Sharon-demon explosion, and I had to get us both out of there immediately.

"Time for a nap, kid," I said, "and then we'll have a little talk."

Kara looked up at me with an expressionless face. It was the face of defeated middle aged woman, not one of an energetic young teenager. Her lips did not move, but her eyes said, "I think not, Wizard."

Before I could utter the sleeping spell, Kara's face and body then began to change into that of a gorgeous woman in her mid-twenties. A skilled and versatile actor prettied herself up for the final scene of her farewell performance.

Kara's right hand reached over her lap, and picked up her inert left hand a second time. This time, however, she placed it against the side of her neck. The front end of the bracelet pressed against her carotid artery. Her right hand jiggled the bracelet and I heard a muffled "phfft." A tiny stream of blood seeped out from beneath the bracelet and trickled down her neck.

I realized that the blaze from the fire was making my back feel much warmer, despite the protection of my leather duster. As I left the room Kara's body was already beginning to stiffen. Whatever liquid she had put on the point of the dart, it certainly worked fast. If necessary, I could show the White Council analyze the spot of liquid which had dried on my duster, to prove that Susie's own action – not my magic – had been the cause of her death.

There was no point in hanging around, telling skeptical police and arson investigators about murderous demons and the like.

I walked through the living room towards the front door, and mentally reviewed all my actions inside the house. I did not recall leaving fingerprints on anything that would not be destroyed by the spreading fire.

I noticed Muffin sitting impassively on the sofa. Mostly likely she was still drugged out by whatever they have given her, before they went and placed her at the stream. I pick her up, shoved open the front door with my shoulder and went outside. I pushed the door closed with my foot, and continued walking a few more yards before I stopped and turned around.

The two stone pedestals which had held the odd-looking lions were now bare.

As I leaned over to let Muffin down on the grass, a movement in the woods off to the side caught my eye. I had a very brief glimpse of something maroon, which immediately disappeared into the foliage.

My mind revised the opening scene from a two-hander to a three-person ensemble. Sharon and Kara needed to remove the possibility that some random hiker might see Muffin and take her away before I reached the stream. Most likely the jogger had carried Muffin from the mansion, and then placed the drugged shih tzu beside the stream only after he received Sharon's "important business call" on his cell phone. He probably waited by the curve of the trees, watching Muffin and keeping an eye open for other hikers, until he saw me approaching. Then he plugged in his ipod and jogged into my view.

I drove down the driveway, and started towards the Interstate which would take me back to Chicago. I again reviewed my actions and wondered whether there might have been anyplace I had left fingerprints.

Then I heard a tremendous explosion from some distance behind me. I looked in my rear view mirror, and saw a huge tower of smoke rising from about two miles away, where the Kingsland mansion would have been located.

I stopped worrying about the police finding my fingerprints. Somebody, most likely somebody wearing a maroon hoodie, had eliminated the possibility of leaving behind any type of evidence whatsoever of what had happened at the mansion.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two.**

The ankle I twisted finding Muffin still hurt a bit the next morning. When I got to my office, I decided to take the elevator, rather than follow my usual routine of walking up the stairs to the Fifth floor. I spent most of my morning sitting in my chair, feet on my desk, bouncing questions around my mind.

"Who set up yesterday's trap?," and "Why?"

"Why would somebody go to all that trouble now?," I also asked myself.

Over the course of my career as Chicago's only Wizard For Hire, I had admittedly teed off a lot of entities, both humans and non-humans. But things have been slow recently. Even the Red Court vampires were keeping an uncharacteristic low profile, with virtually no noticeable criminal activity, as if distracted by more pressing matters.

But the main question that kept popping up in my mind, again and again, was, "What happened to the freaking statues?"

I have seen, and occasionally caused, a lot of very weird things. The rampaging zombified skeleton of Tyrannosaur Rex certainly trumps a pair of strolling stone pussycats. But those things require some very serious mojo. I had felt nothing, absolutely nothing, nada, emanating from the statues on my way into the house. On the other hand, all my attention had been focused on Kara and Sharon, as well as the stench of demon wafting out from the interior of the house.

By the time I got tired being stumped, I discovered that several hours had passed. I also realized I was hungry.

I returned to my office building after a brief lunch. As I got out of the elevator, I saw Marten Rouge-Maillot coming out of the door to the stairwell. Martin was an accountant from Montreal who worked for a Chicago investment firm. It conducted some of its back office operations in a suite of offices on the fifth floor of my building. Martin was medium height, and spoke with a high, squeaky voice. He was a bit on the heavy side, with pastey white skin, pale blue eyes, and short, neatly cut reddish-brown hair. Most of the time he wore a clean, newly pressed navy blue suit, a pinstripe shirt, and a yellow silk tie decorated with red dollar signs. Today he wore running shoes, khakis, and a Pinpoint Oxford shirt. It was pink and had a buttoned-down collar.

Marten and I were probably the only ones in the building who regularly usually used the stairs instead of the elevator. Whereas I avoided the elevator to minimize possible electro-mechanical problems, he avoided it to minimize possible cardio-vascular problems. One of the times we happened to start going up or down the stairs at the same time, he had talked about his health. Martin told me he had an arrhythmic heart, and, in additional to prescribing heart pills, his doctor had recommended that he as much exercise as possible to strengthen his heart muscle.

Marten noticed my limp as I left the elevator, and we exchanged a few clichés about growing older.

"Growing old can be a bitch," I said creatively, "until you consider the alternative."

"Well I, for one, intend to acquire enough money to afford to stay young and healthy forever," he replied.

"Not without the proper spells," I told him.

He began laughing uproariously, as if I had made a joke.

"Harry," he gasped, as he paused between laughs, "I really got to get you to perform at my son's birthday party."

I had abandoned my attempts to explain to him what a Wizard For Hire actually did, a long, long time ago.

We exchanged brief goodbyes with each other, and returned to our offices.

My phone had not rung all morning.

It was even quieter in the afternoon.

After several hours, I finished my second paperback of the afternoon. I tossed it into the cardboard box I keep at the side of my desk. I started thumbing through the mail the postman had left earlier. Most of it was junk mail, which I tossed into the metal waste basket on the opposite side of my desk. The mail also included several envelopes which were obviously bills. I did not bother opening them, but simply added them to the pile at the corner of my desk.

Today's mail also contained an issue a _Chicagoland Today_, one of the city's latest glossies. I quickly skimmed the issue, with most of my attention focused on rating the models in its advertisements on a scale of 1 to 10. Most of them rated an 8 or higher. The advertisers had money. Half of the magazine's pages consisted of outright advertisements. Almost all the other pages were either advertisements or corporate press releases disguised as news articles and listicles.

If you lowered your standards, the remaining 1% of the pages could pass as actual news articles, containing real (but for me, irrelevant) information. Nothing that answered my need for rent money. After a quick perusal, the magazine also sailed into the trash can.

Then it hit me. I was a wizard. A wizard for hire. I also knew quite a few spells. If I said "dormius," I could put someone into a dreamless sleep. "Dispertius" would create a hole in a wall or the ground. "Flickum bicus" created a small fire, very useful for lighting candles. I also knew, but almost never used, a spell to summon demons. Why shouldn't there also be a spell to summon clients? I decided to experiment.

"Clientus." Nothing happened. I waited a moment. My office door still remained closed.

"Rich non-demon clientus," I said, a bit more forcefully. Except for soft swishing of the overhead fan, there was total silence. I decided to try one more throw of the dice before abandoning my new game.

"Scrooge McDuckus." I nearly jumped out of my chair when the damn phone rang.

I don't like telephones, or any other type of device invented since the 1940s. The feeling was mutual. Telephones, computers, fax machines, and almost every other type of modern electrical or mechanical appliance tended to break down or misbehave if I came too close to it. Now the telephone was using coincidence to deliberately make fun of me.

I counted to five to regain my composure, then picked up the receiver in the middle of the seventh ring. "Dresden speaking."

The caller was female, and spoke crisply with a mild Scottish burr. "Mr. Dresden, Archibald Mactavish would like to like to come and talk with you about retaining your services."

"Hell's Bell's! Had I accidentally discovered a new spell?" was what I thought. What I actually said was, "I'd be very happy to meet with Mr. Mactavish. When would be a good time?"

"Fifteen minutes from now. We are only a few blocks away from your office."

"That's fine," I said, "I look forward to meeting him." It wasn't until the end of the sentence that my brain registered that the caller had hung up after my first two words. Mactavish and his secretary evidently did not like to waste time on pleasantries. I was perfectly okay with that.

I looked around my office, wondering whether I should do anything to make it appear more presentable to the potential new client. I snorted a short laugh.

My office was a small room which occupied a corner of the fifth floor of a building in the low rent section of the Chicago business district. Two of the walls contained matching sets of large windows. My desk was at the corner where the two walls met, and faced diagonally across the room. The wall adjacent to the hallway had only the door, a large clock, and a mahogany coat rack. If you removed my duster, and closely examined the sides of the coat rack, you'd discover that the dark varnish covered a series of carvings. These runes were identical to those which covered my blasting rod and my regular wooden staff, which was lying on the floor behind my desk.

"It never hurts to have some backup," I said to myself.

The wall also contained two copper grates covering small ventilation ducts. They used to provide the office with heat in the winter and cool air in the summer. For the past two years, however, the only function they performed was to provide a resting place for a growing layer of undisturbed dust. At first I tried complaining to the building's landlord, but each time I'd left a message on his answering machine, his only response was to send me a notice raising my rent.

I eventually stopped bothering to complain. My landlord, however, kept continuing to send me notices of additional rent hikes.

A few feet to the right of the door, the remaining wall had a row of metal filing cabinets and some mismatched, overstuffed chairs. It had taken several visits to Goodwill and the Salvation Army stores before I found the right combination of both comfortable and clean, but it was worth it.

A small wooden table stood in the middle of the office. It had a few pamphlets for potential clients which explained basic wizardry, most of them written by me. They described how wizards were not supernatural beings, but simply people gifted with certain specialized skills. Skills that could be useful for jobs like finding missing people, pets and other lost objects.

Contrary to what some potential clients assumed, wizardry was not Voodoo. You did not go to a wizard to cast a spell to harm or kill someone, or make someone fall in love with you. You do not hire a wizard to perform a seance. Wizards could not contact the dead. That is what the pamphlets said.

The clock now ticked to 4:18. I gathered from the behavior of Mactavish's secretary that he was not the type of person who would be late. I decided best way to make the most favorable impression would be to conserve my energy and, and at precisely 4:29 remove my feet from the top of my desk. That way his first view of me would focus on my face, instead of the soles of my cowboy boots.

As I watched the clock tick away to 4:20, I felt a nagging feeling that there was something familiar about Mactavish's name. After a minute or two of brain searching, I took my feet off the desk, got up and reached down into the waste basket for the discarded issue of _Chicagoland Today_.

I sat on the front of my desk as I thumbed through the pages until I came across "The Battle of the Malls," a slightly re-written press release pretending to be a news article.

According to the article, two new giant shopping centers had recently opened in the Chicago suburbs. They were designed and constructed by developers using two new different approaches to shopping. Mactavish was the guiding force behind Inverness, a waterside mega-mall located in Lake County, just north of Chicago's Cook County. Lake County was home to many of Chicago's ritzy suburbs, and its residents had the highest median income of any county in the state.

Inverness stores carried only high-end merchandise, like custom-made jewelry and designer clothing made only with natural fibers. All the residents of its food court had signed a pledge to offer only organic, non-genetically modified food. I was willing to bet that Inverness did not contain a McDonald's. It was very unlikely that I would ever visit that Mall - under ordinary circumstances.

Most of the article focused on the other newcomer. Its stores were was located about 50 miles southwest of the city, mid-point between Joliet and Aurora. Its official name was the Joliet-Aurora Economic Development Court, but many people used the shorter name of Jaede Court. Some simply called it Jade.

Jade was not a traditional mall, which consist of dozens of stores all inter-connected by a single enclosed area. The article proclaimed that such traditional malls (including, by implication, snooty high-end Inverness) were going out of style. Smart shoppers were now taking all their business to new "retail power clusters" - groupings of big box retail stores which stood apart from each other, but shared a giant parking lot covering hundreds of acres.

Inverness contained dozens of stores, but Jade consisted of only five. Its major anchor was BuySmart, one of the biggest of the Big Box retailers. BuySmart had its origins as Japan Department Stores, a retail chain founded in Tokyo well before K-Mart and Walmart began their operations in the United States. It initially grew more slowly, but it expanded its operations into Hong Kong and China a decade before the two American chains. It was now the largest retailer in China and the rest of Asia. It had ambitions to kick Walmart aside, and become the largest retailer in the United States.

The power cluster's four other residents were also national retail giants: Office Manager, which sold business supplies; Toys "N" More, which I always felt stood for "cheaply made toys and more useless junk"; American Home, which sold lumber, paint, and other building materials; and, Best Circuits, which sold computers and consumer electronics. It was the type of place which I could cause a total shut down, simply by taking a leisurely stroll through its major aisles.

As further evidence of the article's PR origins, it contained several flattering photographs of Arthur Buyden II. He was the grandson of the late Arthur Buyden I, one of the company's founders. A two-page photo spread showed Arthur II and a group of Chinese officials and businessmen cutting a large green ribbon. They were celebrating the opening of China's newest and largest BuySmart store, at Shanghai's Jaiding District. In the background of the photo was the Shanghai World Financial Center, one of the tallest skyscrapers in Asia. BuySmart's home office occupied several of its top floors.

Arthur II was young and handsome, with light brown hair. He was also tall. He towered over almost all the others in the group. Some of them had nervous smiles, but most simply looked nervous, as if they were all in danger of losing their heads if anything went wrong at the opening ceremony.

The sole exception was the one who was almost as tall as Buyden, but more than twice as bulky. He had a passive, watchful look. My intuition told me that if someone in the group were to lose their head, he would be the one swinging the scimitar.

Buyden, on the other hand, radiated happy confidence. The big smile on his face resembled that of a shark which had managed to find its way into a large Chicago Park District swimming pool - on the hottest day of the year.

A second photo contained another flattering shot of Buyden, now at some charity function. He was standing next to his beautiful fiancée, Shui ("Susie") Xian, an actor and former Olympic swimmer.

The _Chicagoland Today_ article had no picture of Mactavish. It simply mentioned that he one of Europe's major mega-mall developers. Three years ago, he opened Scotland's largest mall. It covered a small hill near the outskirts of Edinburgh and had a spectacular view of Castle Rock. Mactavish next decided to try his hand in the United States, and began a journey to the west.

Last year he opened his first three American mega-malls: one in the New Jersey suburbs of New York City, the second in Reston, Virginia, and the third in Palm Beach, Florida.

I re-read the article twice and looked up at the clock. The minute hand descended like the blade of a sticky pendulum, from 4:29 to 4:30.

I dropped the magazine onto the top of my desk, just as the door swung open.

Botticelli's Venus entered my office.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three.**

In Botticelli's time, and now, many people believed that a person's physical appearance also represented their spiritual interior, their soul; and automatically assumed that a person who was beautiful on the outside also was beautiful on the inside, possessing a kind, generous temperament and a pure soul. Anyone who has ever looked beneath the flesh mask of a Red Court vampire – or simply worked a single day on a movie set with a temperamental human starlet – knows that such beliefs are a pile of monkey poop.

I have had both experiences, but even so, my first reaction was to let down all my defenses and just stare at the obviously flawless Venus who entered my office.

Her face was identical with the one created by Botticelli. Heavy eyelids partly covered almond shaped, saffron colored eyes, centered in a placid, perfectly oval face framed by sandy blonde hair. But there were a couple of differences between the Venus that Botticelli painted standing in a giant clam shell and the blond beauty who walked into my office.

For starters, Botticelli's Venus was completely naked; the one in my office was fully dressed, wearing a dark grey chauffeur's uniform and polished black boots. The clam shell beauty had long flowing hair. Her tresses were long enough to cover all the strategic parts of her body, which changed the painting's rating from an X to an R. The uniformed blonde, on the other hand, had short cropped hair, cut to a length just short of tomboy.

Both were tall, young, beautiful and well endowed. But while Botticelli's had given his Venus a soft and voluptuous body, mine looked like its uniform covered a body of lean and well-toned muscles, like that of an NFL cheerleader. Her shoulders, however, were wider than a cheerleader's; closer to the size of those on a Chicago Bulls wide receiver.

She first looked directly at me. I was leaning against the front of my desk, with both hands empty and perched on its edge. I did not appear to be any sort of a threat.

"Harry Dresden?" she inquired.

"The one and only," I replied, leaning forward into a half-bow.

She then ignored me, and rapidly studied my office.

Her eyes darted to the windows covering the wall to my left, then scanned across the room to the filing cabinets to the left of the partly open door. She bent her knees slightly and moved her out her left elbow out a bit, It pushed the door completely open, till the doorknob hit the wall behind it. I suspected that if the moving door had encountered anything before it hit the wall – a waste basket or a crouched person – she would have slammed her full weight against the door.

Her uniform jacket opened a bit when she pushed the door, and I only then noticed the shoulder holster under her left arm. She had a very good tailor.

When the door tapped against the wall, she revolved her head again, in the opposite direction. Her second scan of the room focused upon the upper walls and ceiling, with a slight pause at the ceiling fan. She then looked down, and made a third scan, pausing a moment to study to space under my office table and beneath the stuffed chairs. I was impressed.

While training my protege Molly, I had repeatedly told her: "Remember to look in all three dimensions. Human instincts don't tend toward looking above us, or directly at our feet, in general. You have to make yourself pick up the habit." I wished that Molly had been in the office then, to watch how a professional did it.

As the blonde stepped further into the office, she glanced briefly over her shoulder to at the wall on the right side of the door. She didn't notice see anything amiss, like a rune-covered coat rack, the one hidden by my duster.

"Blondie, you are very, very good, but not perfect," I said to myself. I mentally gave myself a hidden smile, as she turned back towards me.

Evidently my interior smile must have shown itself on the exterior of my face as something akin to a knowing smirk. Blondie looked at me like I was shouting, "There's something there that you don't see!"

She stopped, turned around, and gave the wall another, longer examination. Her slowly moving stare passed over the duster and coatrack, the clock, and settled briefly upon the two ventilation grates. She must have decided they were too small to contain any threat. She turned for another look at my face, to see if I might reveal what she was overlooking.

Before she could fully face me, I shifted my eyes to stare at the empty office doorway. She turned to look where I was looking, and remembered her boss was waiting outside. There was no apparent reason for him to continue his wait, simply on the grounds that I had smiled at a beautiful woman. She gave me a half-suspicious look and turned towards the doorway.

"Mr. MacTavish," she announced.

"Thank you, Sandy," said Angus MacTavish as he ambled into my office.

Based solely upon his name and my grab bag of ethnic cliches, I had earlier formed a mental image of Mactavish as a thin, angular, flinty-eyed old man with a high-pitched voice, probably wearing a plaid kilt, white shirt, and tam o'shanter. I was right about the old and white shirt part, but wrong about everything else.

The Angus MacTavish who strolled my office was a bit short, and somewhat portly. His face was his most distinguishing feature. It was dominated by a white and immaculately trimmed beard, mustache and sideburns. They covered most of the lower half of his face, except for his big happy smile. The upper half featured a large, broad nose, twinkling blue-grey eyes behind gold wire-rimmed eyeglasses, and bushy white eyebrows. He looked like a cross between Santa Claus and Andrew Carnegie. The main difference was a set of scars below and above his left eye. The upper scar was almost entirely hidden by a bushy white eyebrow, but the lower half beneath his eye socket was an almost inch-long line of thin scar tissue. Both eyes, moreover, seemed to be slightly slanted, and his rosy pink skin looked it contained a faint dash of brown and yellow. Drawing again from my grab bag of ethnic cliches, I thought that he and the Dali Lama might share a distant common ancestor. Then I realized that if you go back far enough, I and MacTavish and the Dali Lama, and everyone else on earth – everyone human, that is – also share common ancestors.

In any event, MacTavish and Sandy certainly shared a very good tailor. He was smartly dressed in a dark blue suit, which included a four-button vest. From the way it fitted his portly frame, the suit must have been tailor made. I didn't see any bulge which would indicate a concealed weapon, but neither did I notice one on Sandy. He had a pale yellow flower in the button hole of his jacket's left lapel. The only direct acknowledgement of his ancestry was a flannel plaid tie. I assumed that its pattern of intersecting reds and blues represented the MacTavish Clan Tartan.

MacTavish was holding a long leash when he entered, connected to the collar of a small black dog that looked like a young pit bull. I expected him to hand the leash to Sandy, but instead he removed his wristwatch from his right hand. He handed it to Sandy without breaking his stride. He held out his hand as he approached me, and beamed a big smile.

"Mr. Dresden," he said. "I'm Angus Mactavish, and I'm very happy to meet you."

"Likewise," I said as we shook hands. I glanced at the wristwatch Sandy held. It was a diver's digital watch – very complex and very expensive. I was not the first wizard he had shaken hands with.

I also took another look at the small black dog, which had paused well behind MacTavish and was staring up at Sandy. It had hooves instead of paws. I realized it was really a small black pig.

I know people some people who had pet pigs. Most of them had served in Vietnam during the 1970s, and a couple of them had brought back pot-bellied pigs as pets. Young pot-bellied pigs weighed about 20 pounds and could be considered cute. For a while, there was brief trend of people wanting them as pets. The trend ended, however, as soon as the 20 pound darlings grew up, and started weighing in at 100-200 pounds. House training became much more problematic.

MacTavish's pig was still small. Most of it was covered with short black fur, except for its head. The hair on the top of its head was longer, but evenly clipped, as if someone had placed a soup bowl on top and used a pair of scissors to remove anything that still showed.

I initially assumed that the pig was staring up a Sandy's face, while licking its lips with its pointed pink tongue. Then I saw something that looked a lecherous gleam in its eyes, and realized it might be staring at her breasts. Sandy's face showed only a mild disdain, but otherwise she pointedly ignored Porky.

MacTavish noticed me looking behind and gave the leash a slight tug, but did not turn around. The pig licked its lips one more time, winked at Sandy, and started towards us.

As Porky waddled his rear past Sandy, she glanced over to assure that MacTavish was not looking in her direction. Her right foot lashed out, and the toe of her book flicked against the pig's rear. Porky gave a loud squeal and tumbled head over hooves, attracting MacTavish's attention. Sandy had already returned to a straight standing position, and was staring innocently at the wall of the opposite side of my office.

Meanwhile, Porky regained his footing and turned around. There was enough slack in the leash for him to make a running leap at Sandy. His top of his skull connected against the shin of her right leg, just above her boot. Luckily, Porky did not have the weight or speed to cause any real damage, just a bad sting. Sandy bellowed out something unintelligible that I assumed was a Celtic curse upon the entire species of pigdom, grabbed her right knee and began hopping around on her left foot.

MacTavish shouted out something that sounded like "Scooby," and gave the leash a small yank. I could not tell whether Scooby was the pig's name, or the Celtic version of "Bad Piggy!"

Porky gave MacTavish a startled and pained look. He pointed one of his hooves at still-hopping Sandy, as gestured as if trying to say, "But, she started it!"

"Will you behave yourself, or will I have to teach you some manners?" MacTavish asked with a somewhat pained voice.

Sandy stopped hopping around on one leg and evidently decided this was an opportunity for her to accidentally misinterpret MacTavish's gentle reprimand as a direct order for her to discipline Porky. She started a short run towards him, while drawing back her right leg like a Chicago Bulls place kicker.

MacTavish and I were out of the line of fire, so I just stood there. I was worried. I was not upset about Porky's imminent injuries, but about how much more my landlord would raise my rent, after he found out about the broken window which would result after Porky sailed out of the building.

MacTavish gave a tired sigh, as if he was watching the rerun of a sitcom episode that he had already seen many times before. Just as Sandy's boot was about to smash against Porky's ribs, MacTavish gave the leash a strong yank. This pulled Porky's body to the side, and Sandy's boot connected with thin air. Her leg's momentum carried it up into the air, and Sandy flailed her arms wildly, trying to maintain her balance. She failed and fell backward, with her rear end making a big "thump" as it hit the carpet. She didn't appear to be hurt, just a bit annoyed.

I looked at Sandy, then at Porky, and then at MacTavish, who was now rolling his eyes. I looked down again at Porky, his haircut, and I thought of the Three Stooges. I couldn't help myself. I began to laugh.

Porky glared at me. He waddled over, stopped directly in front of me, and looked up to make sure he had my undivided attention.

"What's so funny, wise guy?" he asked, with a deep gravelly voice that sounded exactly like Moe Howard. "If you want something to laugh at, how about this?"

Porky raised up his rear leg, and urinated over the toes of my cowboy boots.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

I stared down at my boots. No sizzling noise, no noxious smoke, no burning acidic foam, or any other indication they had been hit by anything other than pig urine.

They've been covered by things much worse.

Porky was looking at me with a smug smile, his legs already flexed for a jump to avoid any retaliatory kick. As far as Porky was concerned, however, I already had his number. I decided to use the most vicious and hurtful response ever.

I ignored him, and looked over at MacTavish.

"Won't you please have a seat, Mr. MacTavish," I said, gesturing towards the chairs.

"Thank you," had said, and sat in the chair nearest to the filing cabinet. He gestured to Sandy, who had already risen to her feet. She came over to the empty chair at the corner of the room. Instead of sitting down, she pulled a small dark object, about the size of a cell phone out of her pocket and placed it on the back of the chair.

Porky jumped onto the seat of the chair. He was no longer smiling; now he was just scowling at me.

Sandy then circled around my desk and went to the window sill on the other side of the room, where she placed a similar object. I tossed an inquisitive look at MacTavish. He raised a single finger to his lips, and smiled. Sandy then returned to the center of the room and took a third identical object out of her pocket. I heard a click which sounded like she had turned some sort of switch on, and she placed the third object on the pamphlet table.

I heard a soft buzzing sound which seemed to come from all three objects. The a faint blue aura emanated from each object, connecting them into a triangle. MacTavish, Porky and I were inside the triangle. Sandy remained outside the triangle, and moved back to the opposite wall. She now had a clear view of all three of us, as well as the doorway.

"Thank you for your patience, Mr. Dresden, MacTavish said. "I know that this is your office, but I felt it best to take a few extra precautions. Thanks to these devices which Sandy whipped up, anyone trying to watch or listen to our conversion will perceive something very different. It will merely be me rambling to you for thirty minutes about my concern over shoplifting and inventory shrinkage problems at Inverness." He looked at the office clock.

"So, what type of problems do you want me to help you with?" I asked.

"Right now," he started," I need your help investigating a little problem I am having. Depending upon what you find out. I might need more even help on an even bigger problem."

"What type of problems?" I replied.

MacTavish hesitated, cleared his throat, and stared at me a for moment, directly into my eyes. Not many people do that.

"Mr. Dresden," he began, "I came to you because you are very highly recommended."

I decided not to ask, for now, who made the recommendation.

"As a prelude to describing my problems, however, I would like to ask you a few questions about yourself. Depending upon what you know, this would facilitate the exchange of information between ourselves – in both directions."

"Sounds fair enough," I said. "Fire away."

"First, " he said, "how knowledgeable are you about China, and how much do you know about Asia in general and the Chinese in particular?"

"Very little, I'm sorry to say," I answered. "Only that they make great takeout…" I looked over at Porky and added, "…the Golden Wok Kitchen down the street has Moo Shu Pork to die for."

I smiled at Porky, and he scowled back at me.

Then I remembered my rent problem, and decided to refocus and pretend to act like a professional. I thought of the _Chicagoland Today_ article, and added, "… And, also they make almost all the clothing sold by Walmart and the other big stores."

The magazine article and MacTavish's question had crystallized numerous mental images that had been rambling around the subconscious region of my brain and decided to take a stroll into my conscious neighborhood.

Once in a while, flaming monkey poop, acidic slime, and other professional hazards compelled me to buy new clothes. My usual practice was to get my tee shirts and jeans at the local Goodwill and Salvation Army stores. Socks and underwear I would purchase at regular clothing stores. My usual modus operandi was to circle the thrift store's tables and mentally note the best selections, then re-circle to pick up my selections and take them to the counter.

A few years ago, however, I noticed that Goodwill and similar stores were getting more crowded. The new customer looked less like me, and… more normal, simply like regular middle class Chicagoans who happened to do their clothes shopping in thrift stores. I assumed that the retro-grunge look was becoming chic. This hadn't really registered with me, until I began noticing that if I saw something I liked but did not pick up it up immediately, it would be gone when I finished perusing and returned to the table. About that same time, I also noticed that more and more of the nearby small clothing stores where I got my socks and underwear were going out of business.

Once in a while, when I drove past the city outskirts on a case, I would stop in at a Walmart, K-Mart or one of the other big stores. Their socks and underwear were much cheaper than those in the small stores in the city. Eventually I also began looking at their tee shirts and jeans. Their new clothing sold for about the same price as the used clothing at the Salvation Army, so I tried some out. Most of the time, they didn't seem hold up as well as the used stuff I got at the thrift stores.

One time, I had taken Molly with me to a store in the mall. She had headed off to the Women's Section, so I had a few – make that a dozens – of minutes to fill after I had made my handful of purchases.

While idly perusing random items of clothing, I notice that almost every single one was labeled "Made in China." This included the brands with names like "Rugged Frontiersman," and "North Woods Lumberman." The only exception was "American Patriot," a line of men's underwear decorated with stripes of red, white, and blue. Its label said: "Made in Vietnam."

When I gave MacTavish my brief answer, he chuckled, and his eyes moved to the magazine lying on the top of my desk. It was still opened at the article on "The Battle of the Malls."

"Very good," he said. "But it's not just clothing – it's everything they sell."

"If you will continue to indulge me," he went on, " here is my second question. What do you know about Jade?"

"It's a precious stone," I answered, "like a green diamond, but not as hard. I think it's found mostly in Asia. My protege Molly would be a lot more knowledgeable about it than I am." Molly liked jewelry, especially if it involved piercings. I figured that if MacTavish had done enough homework to know I was a wizard, he probably also knew about Molly.

Then I gestured to the magazine and added, "It's also the nickname of a new shopping mall southwest of the city."

"Yes, it certainly is," he replied. Then he paused and shut his eyes, as if trying to envision the wording of his next sentence.

"Before I ask my third question," he said, "I want to let you know something. I am well aware of the fact that you have fought with, and sometimes killed, vampires of the White Court, the Black Court, and the Red Court. I have obtained this information from unimpeachable sources."

I wondered who these unimpeachable sources were. Also, why had they given this information to MacTavish, and why he had wanted it?

"My third question, Mr. Dresden, is, how much you know about the Jade Court vampires?"


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

"Very, very little," I replied. "In fact, hardly anything, except for their name and the fact that they exist."

MacTavish did not looked surprised by my ignorance.

I thought another moment, and added, "I knew a Knight of the Cross who had fought a duel with a Jade Court vampire, but he did not say much about it and he is now dead."

"Shiro Yoshimo," MacTavish said as he nodded. "I am surprised that he mentioned anything at all about that. He was a man of very few words, even when I knew him back at the monastery."

MacTavish must have seen the questions in my face, and answered, "Yes, contrary to my present appearance, I spent several years at a Buddhist monastery during the late 1950s. It was when I was rebelling against the idea of going into the family business, and also against Western Capitalism in general. I suppose I might have joined the Communist Party, and, in fact, Kim Philby was probably cultivating me for that very end. But the outbreak of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and photographs of Soviet troops shooting down Hungarian workers turned me against Russian communism. A steadily growing stream of information about Mao's purges turned me against the Chinese version."

MacTavish paused, and looked at me. "As you may have guessed, I already know quite a bit about your background. It may be helpful for you to know some of mine." He again gestured to the magazine. " It is somewhat different from the drabbles I have allowed to be leaked to the press."

I nodded for him to continue.

"My family hails from Glasgow, where they have been merchants since the middle ages. Starting with "Old Angus," as everyone called him, one family member or another has been in the China Trade for nearly two centuries. Old Angus initially began by carrying opium between Calcutta and Canton, after the British victories in the Opium War legalized that trade. By the time British and world opinion forced the closure of opium trading, the family firm had become a large exporter of British textiles to China, and an importer of tea, silk and jade. Our Asian headquarters were in Shanghai. The rise of Japan and Japanese industries, and their colonization of Manchuria and northern China ate into our market share. The firm lost its customer base during World War II, but survived by providing uniforms for the British Army. I was born too late to participate in the war, but two of my three brothers served. The eldest one stayed home, being groomed to take control of the family business."

A small rustling noise made him pause, and I looked behind me. Sandy was at the corner of the windows, rearranging the shades so she could look down on the street. She didn't indicate anything was amiss, so MacTavish continued.

"I spent the postwar years at Eton, then went on to read Economics at St. Andrews University, as had my brothers. At first I unquestionably shared my parents' plan that I would enter the family business after I graduated. I discovered, however, I had an unusual talent for foreign languages. I quickly picked up Chinese, Japanese, Urdu and others almost without any effort. I also developed an interest in Eastern history and philosophy, and won a scholarship for Oriental Studies at Cambridge. Since two of my brothers (one had not returned from the war) were already in the family business, my parents let me indulge my desire to obtain a doctorate and possibly stay in academia. I had vague plans to become a Professor of Oriental Studies, but I now suspect that my parents would not have been displeased had I joined the Foreign Service."

"In fact, they were pleased when, at the end of my first year at Cambridge, I broached the idea of a dissertation about the role of British merchants in early Chinese and Japanese industrialization. It would be partly based upon my study of the hitherto-ignored archives of family papers and firm business records. I think they envisioned an imposing looking book which could always be casually placed upon their living room table to impress visitors."

"Their only caveat was a request that I 'show discretion' about certain, undetailed matters, whose publication 'might unnecessarily embarrass' the family," he added. "I assumed they were referring to the early trade in opium, which did not seem like a particularly embarrassing secret. It was not even a secret, since it was well known among scholars and students that almost all the western merchants had engaged in the opium trade."

"I spent the summer immersed in the papers of the family and the family firm. I discovered that the opium trade was the least of possible family embarrassments."

"Old Angus, the founder of the family fortune, not only smuggled opium. He and his rapidly growing fleet of ships also carried coolie slave laborers from Canton and Hong Kong to Ceylonese tea plantations, South Pacific guano islands, and South American silver mines; and young girls from India, Indochina and the East Indies to the brothels of Canton, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai. A select few, the very most beautiful ones, he kept for himself. He supported several on a permanent basis, both before and after his marriage to the Presbyterian missionary's daughter whose portrait hung in the family hall. I visited numerous museums and private galleries to take a closer look at all my ancestors' portraits. I discovered that, at about this time, my branch of the family's bright ginger hair became considerably darker, and our eyes acquired a small but distinct slant."

"Whatever his activities or social arrangements, Old Angus prospered. As his trade grew, he acquired other ships. Several of his fleet also began making numerous voyages to American ports, notably Boston, Providence and New York. One or two unverifiable sources refer to a possible American consort, wife or concubine, and even another entire family. As one rumor went, he kept them all ensconced in a secluded coastal mansion at Innsmouth, just north of Boston."

"Be that as it may," MacTavish continued, "much of our firm's fortune was based upon luck and our reputation for reliable service. No matter how bad the weather, or how rough the seas, Old Angus always demanded that his captains kept to their timetables. All cargoes, legal or illegal, no matter how big or how small, were always delivered to where and when they were promised.

Unlike the other merchant shippers, he had no problem with pirates. When ever a hostile vessel appeared on the horizon, he would put down his telescope and order his first mate bring him out a large conch shell which he kept in his cabin. It had been given to him by his father, when Old Angus first sailed to the Far East. If the hostile vessel approached canon range, Old Angus would bring the conch shell to his lips and blow out a loud screeching noise. A Japanese merchant who had heard the sound described it as the noise made by made by a cat which was being burned alive. If the pirate continued to approach, Angus' crew would note some sort of turmoil on its decks. Then the ship would sink - with no survivors. Eventually the pirates learned to leave Old Angus, and any ship flying his company flag, alone. It was said that if one of his ships approached a strait full of pirates, they would all draw back to create a clear channel.

Not only that, the company ships seemed immune to all the disasters which normally beset other vessels. A totally dense fogbank surrounding a large dangerous area of unseen rocks and coral reefs would halt all other ships; but his ships would continue full speed ahead – and always come out unharmed on the other side. If one of his captains had had command of the _Titanic_, it would have arrived at New York without a scratch."

"All of his good fortune eventually went to his head. Old Angus became obsessed with emulating Sir James Brooke, the Englishman whom the Sultan of Brunei had appointed Rajah of a Kingdom in Borneo. In his wilder moments, Old Angus even bragged about plans to exceed the exploits of Sir Robert Clive and General Warren Hastings, who were responsible for establishing the British Indian Empire.

At that time the Chinese Empire was being torn apart by the Taiping Rebellion and other revolts. For most observers, it was not a question of 'If, but of 'When,' the Qing Dynasty would fall. In the early 1880s, Old Angus began ranting how he and his children would become the next dynasty running the Empire, and everyone thought he had gone crazy. Then he began sending orders to his captains to assemble all his company ships at Java and Sumatra in the summer of 1883, for the beginnings of what he called "the human invasion fleet."

There was a sound like faint footsteps outside my office doorway. Sandy glided over and looked down the hall. She evidently saw nothing unusual. She nodded to MacTavish and returned to her position near the far window.

"His order caused quite a commotion," continued MacTavish, "since it meant turning down the business of some of the firm's most valued customers. Some of his captains quit the company, rather than comply, but most followed his orders. When they arrived, they found the entire Sunda Strait crowded with steamships, sailing ships, junks and literally hundreds of other vessels containing every pirate, criminal, deserter, and soldier-of-fortune in the East Indies. There were rumors that the fleet even included a Royal Navy warship, whose crew had mutinied and killed its officers in order to join Old Angus. This rumor was vigorously denied by British officials, and any sailor – whether ordinary seaman or commissioned officer – who was heard repeating the rumor was immediately sentenced to a minimum of 100 lashes."

"Meanwhile, the Chinese Imperial Army officers and various rebel leaders apparently agreed to an unofficial truce. Millions of soldiers disengaged, withdrew from the inland battle fronts and marched towards Shanghai, Ningbo, Canton and all the other Treaty Ports which contained offices and warehouses of the family firm. Imperial and rebel troops formed new lines of battle, with troops and artillery arrayed along opposite sides of the ports' International Settlements."

"On Saturday, August 25, 1883, Old Angus sent orders to the largest ships' captains and mercenary leaders to assemble for a meeting with him the following day, on the firm's flagship, the _Red Hook_. It was anchored in the west cove of Krakatoa Island."


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

MacTavish paused for a minute, then he continued.

"Until then, Krakatoa had been a small island dominated by an inactive volcano. That evening, the volcano began to rumble. Then the entire island burst apart in one of the biggest eruptions in recorded history. The resulting tsunami destroyed the _Red Hook_, every other ship in the Sunda Strait, and almost every other ship and boat within 200 miles"

"The sound of the blast and tremor from the explosion travelled as far as China and India. This appeared to trigger a resumption of fighting between the Chinese rebels and the Imperial forces, with both sending off salvos of artillery at the same time. Few of the shells, however, hit enemy lines. Most of the Imperial bombardment initially fell upon the sections of the International Settlements which held MacTavish offices and warehouses. These set off tremendous explosions which rocked the entire the Treaty Port city. It was as if the offices and warehouses had been completely filled with bombs, gunpowder and explosives."

"Meanwhile, the rebel forces had started shelling the sandbars, mudflats and other non-inhabited wetlands which lay in the shallow waters of the ports' estuaries. After the company warehouses were destroyed, the Imperial Army directed all their artillery fire in the same direction. After several hours, the shelling stopped, and the troops on both sides did nothing but wait for who knows what."

"During the following day, small groups of officers and soldiers from both sides ventured out into the ports' wetlands. They travelled in small boats propelled by long bamboo poles. Each boat also carried a monk or a priest, whose helpers had loaded the boats with large, dark red clay vases. The boats would stop at irregular intervals, and probe the bottom of the shallow water with their poles. The priest chanted and poured into the water dollops of colored liquid carried in the vases. Not infrequently, the water would start roiling and send up a huge blast of slimy grey steam."

"After another day or two of poking around in the water, both sides began preparations to leave the Treaty Ports. The ranking Imperial Officer of the contingent at each Treaty Port made an official call at the International Settlement. He offered his humble apologies for the accidental shelling which fell within the city walls, and promised that the armies would soon depart. Both side's trenches were empty the next day, and fighting soon resumed at the inland battlefields."

"Meanwhile, word began spreading that all of MacTavish's wives, concubines and children had been murdered, at the same time as the Krakatoa explosion. MacTavish's first wife, the missionary's daughter, had mercifully died of natural causes a year earlier. MacTavish had immediately raised the status of some of his concubines – those who had borne him male children – by marrying them in native ceremonies of their original homelands. He housed them and their families in expensive homes, some almost small palaces. Their homes were usually set off in gated enclosures, and the murders were usually not discovered until a tradesman or bodyguard arrived the next day. Some, the lucky ones, would see a pool of blood leaking out from under the door, and immediately call the police. The unlucky visitors, on the other hand, would enter the house and find a human abattoir."

"The carnage was not limited to Asia. Sixteen years earlier, MacTavish had a son, supposedly by his first wife. There were rumors, however, that his mother was actually a young girl that MacTavish had purchased in India, the brought over and installed in a villa adjacent to his home in Hong Kong."

"Young Angus had been sent back home to be raised in Scotland and then educated in England. He graduated from Eton in the spring of 1883. He had intended to enter St. Andrews that Autumn, but then he received orders from his father to return to Hong Kong immediately and help run the family business. Young Angus reserved a luxurious suite on the fastest P&O liner, which was departing in three days."

"On the night of Krakatoa, Young Angus attended a farewell celebration that several of his Eton classmates had organized in London. They held it in a Soho townhouse which was home to an expensive bordello. There was undoubtedly lots of champagne, with loud music and even louder laughter. As the night went on, passersby noted the music getting louder and the laugher turning into surprised shouts and then screams and shrieks of terror. Eventually there was total silence."

"Someone notified a pair of constables patrolling along the next block. They were an old veteran of the force and a young constable-in-training. They knocked on the townhouse door, received no reply, and entered. After a few moments, the older Bobbie staggered out, leaned over the front porch railing and began violently vomiting. The younger one ventured further inside, then came running out and started blowing his whistle for high alert. Every Bobbie within hearing came running over."

"Before anyone could re-enter the townhouse, there was a tremendous explosion. A massive fire destroyed everyone and everything inside the building. There was nothing except ashes and burnt brick where the townhouse had stood."

"Based upon the constables' report, the newspapers began running stories about a mass murderer they dubbed 'the Soho Surgeon.' But the fire had destroyed all evidence and the investigation stalled. Since no similar murders followed, the press turned its attention to other matters.'

"The older constable soon retired and devoted the rest of his life to raising yellow roses at a cottage in East Hampshire. The younger one stayed on the force, received steady promotions, and five years later was one of the lead detectives investigating the murders of the White Chapel prostitutes in 1888. A newspaper reporter once asked the detective whether he thought the crimes were committed by the same person."

" 'Definitely not,' he replied. 'Criminals become more hardened and more vicious as they commit more crimes.' He paused and then frowned as he recollected his memories."

" 'Jack the Ripper showed much more mercy towards his victims than did the Soho Surgeon.'"

"The family firm's loss of most of its ships and its captains would ordinarily have meant the end of the business. But the tsunami following the explosion was so large that it wiped out almost all the other trading ships in the South China Seas and eastern half of the Indian Ocean. The ships of those captains who had not followed Old Angus' order were still safe in port. By common consent, the firm and the captains ignored the earlier letters of resignation, so the firm was able to carry on. Its captains, however, adopted a much more conservative policy regarding ships' voyages. They were more cautious in planning ships' routes, and gave wide berth to regions of the seas known for pirates, fogbanks or any other hazards."

"Of equal concern to the family was the death of Old Angus and all of his children. His parents sadly believed that they were now the last of that branch of the family. They changed their minds a few months later, when one of their maids could no longer hide the fact that she was pregnant."

"The maid's name was Bridget O'Reilly. She was a young and dark lass who had entered the family service after she emigrated from Dublin at the age of nine. She had started out in the kitchen as a scullery maid, and several years later was promoted upstairs to the position of assistant parlour maid. It was there that she caught the eye of Young Angus. Ordinarily, Bridget's pregnancy would have been grounds for instant dismissal, and her own family would have disowned her and thrown her out into the streets. Bridget cried and begged to stay on. She insisted that Young Angus had repeatedly forced himself upon her during his visits from Eton, and that only he could be the father of her child."

"The family had no way of knowing if what she said was true, so they made arrangements for Bridget to be confined to a Home for Fallen Women in Edinburgh. The Home was more than willing to accommodate, since generations of MacTavish men had given the Home a generous stream of contributions."

"The family physician attended Bridget when she gave birth, which was very painful and took many hours. After the baby emerged, the doctor made a close examination. The crown of its head was already covered with reddish down, and its body bore a distinctive birthmark common to other members of the MacTavish Clan. The doctor was certain that it was the son of Young Angus."

"In accordance with the family's orders, the doctor ignored Bridget's pleas to let her hold her baby. Instead, he handed him over to an attending nurse, and gave the weakened mother a strong enough dose of laudanum to put her immediately to sleep. When Bridget finally work up, she was told that her son had died during birth, and was already buried."

"The new great-grandparents were overjoyed. Their family line would be continued. They worried, however, that other branches of the family might greedily claim a right to inherit some of the family properties, because Young Angus had not married the baby's mother."

"They handled the question of illegitimacy by transforming themselves back into grandparents. Mail between Hong Kong and Scotland was very irregular. The new grandparents told friends they had just received word that Old Angus' wife had borne another child, shortly before her death. Their new grandson was in the hands of a governess and wet nurse already sailing back to civilization."

"The family made arrangements with ship line officials for their own governess, wet nurse and baby to board an incoming passenger liner when it stopped at Cherbourg. When the liner completed the final leg of its voyage at London, a horde of MacTavish family members and friends was waiting on the docks to welcome the new arrival to the family. Everyone smiled and cooed as the grandparents showed off their new grandson. The distant relatives who would have inherited the entailed family properties barely managed to hide their disappointment when they saw the unmistakable family birthmark."

"The baby was christened Hamish at a well-attended ceremony in one of Glasgow's largest churches. All of Glasgow's Presbyterian and Congregationalist Churches rung their bells to welcome the new heir apparent of the Clan MacTavish."

"There was still the question of what to do regarding Bridget, who was still at the Edinburgh Home. She needed to be taken further away, a further distance from the other branches of the family. The grandparents' personal solicitor visited Bridget's parents and paid them a small sum. He then paid a somewhat larger sum to their parish priest. Bridget was transferred to Belfast and deposited in the Convent of Perpetual Hope. It was run by a chapter of nuns who observed – and strictly enforced – a vow of silence."

"Bridget was put to work in their laundry room, along with other fallen women. She lasted only a few months. She ate less and less, became weaker and weaker, and eventually refused any food or water. The nuns brought in a priest, who admonished her. He reminded her that it was a mortal sin to commit suicide, and anyone who did so would burn forever in Hell."

"When Bridget ignored the priest, the Convent brought in a doctor, to make arrangements for force feeding," said Angus. "I was able to find his office records, and to read the report of his visit."

"The Doctor had insisted upon examining Bridget's thin and dehydrated body before he administered the tube feeding. He found her hands and arms covered with scars from scalding hot water and steam, and her back covered with signs of beatings. Both were common marks on the fallen women who labored in the Convent laundry room."

"When the Doctor tried to talk with Bridget and explain what tube feeding was, she did not give any sign of hearing him. He noticed her dried out lips started to move, and leaned over to hear what she was trying to say."

" 'They did not even give me a chance to hold him,' she whispered."

"Bridget then began gasping. The Doctor believed she would have started sobbing, had there been enough fluid left in her dehydrated body to make any tears. Instead, she just turned her head to the wall, and died."

MacTavish paused a moment, pulled out a large handkerchief and blew his nose.

"The Church did not allow Bridget to be buried on consecrated grounds," MacTavish continued. "She was a young teenage girl who had died of sorrow - who had been murdered by my ancestors. But the priests adjudged her as an adult woman had taken her own life. Her body was consigned to the Belfast Municipal Cemetery, where she was buried in a pauper's grave."

"I went to Belfast. The Cemetery has several locations where paupers were buried. I spent a considerable amount of time searching through the Cemetery records and the City Archives to find out the precise location where paupers were buried in early 1884."

"I searched for it one Saturday afternoon. It was located in a far corner, well past the prominent graves decorated with crosses, large headstones, and statues of admonishing angels. It was well past the sites of inmates of the Ulster Female Penitentiary and the Ulster Magdalene Asylum. I was at a short row of small stone markers listing the month and year I was looking for. These were not headstones. They were nameless markers of mass graves, each containing the remains of hundreds of paupers, mostly children."

"I arbitrarily picked out one which might have marked Bridget's final resting place, and wished her well."

"I began sobbing. When I realized that I was probably the first and only person who had ever come there to shed tears for her, I began crying all the harder."

"Eventually I composed myself. There was a bench nearby. I sat down and thought long and hard about myself, my family, my ancestors, the monstrous bloodline that I had inherited, and what I might someday become. By the time the sun began to set, I had decided to end it all."

"I was mentally debating the relative merits of a pistol versus a shotgun, when my thoughts were interrupted by a voice of a little girl."

"'Do you have any fish and chips?' she asked."

'


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven.**

"I looked to my right," said MacTavish, "and saw a slim little girl about nine or ten years old standing next to the bench. She had short dark hair and very dark eyes. She was what I imagined Bridget would have looked like at that age, but she was wearing a dancer's costume. She had on a pale yellow leotard and filmy skirt, and matching dancing slippers. She must have been taking a shortcut home from her dancing lessons."

'Do you have any fish and chips?' she asked again.

I just looked at her.

'I smell fish!' she declared. 'Do you have any fish and chips?'

'I'm sorry,' I said, 'but I do not.'

'I'm sorry too,' she said. She pointed beyond the edge of the cemetery to the Leisure Center on Whiterock Road. 'There's a van over there that sells very good fish and chips. People buy them and come over here to sit down and eat. Sometimes I come over and I do a cartwheel for them, and they give me some.'

'There's also a place down that road that sells pizza. Sometimes people come here and eat their pizza,' she continued. 'If I do a cartwheel for them, I always get a slice.'

'And there's a nice lady who comes here all the time to eat her pizza. She sometimes brings an extra pizza - a small one, but all just for me. When she does that, I do a bunch of cartwheels and even a few handsprings for her.'

She gave me a puzzled look.

'If you're not here to eat, why are you here?' she asked. 'The only other people who come here but don't eat are couples who come here because they want to be alone with each other. But they usually don't start showing up until later in the evening.'

She plopped down on the opposite side of my bench.

'And then there was the time that a really big bunch of people came here,' she continued. 'They brought a big black statue that they called a movie camera. Once in a while everyone stop talking, and then a few of them would parade around in front of the statue and start talking again. For a while, they were the only ones who did any talking then, but they stopped when one of the other people got angry and shouted that he was going to cut them up. Then everyone would begin talking and moving around again. Sometimes two of the people stood in front of the statute behaved like a pair that came here because wanted to be alone, but they were only pretending.

'And then some of the other people got dressed up funny and pretended to be monsters and demons. But they weren't really scary at all. They were just silly. None of them behaved like real demons and monsters. Everybody was doing everything allll wrong! Except for knowing that it was really important to put a stake through the monster's heart.'

'Are you hungry?' she asked. 'If you are, there is a van by the Leisure Center which sells very good fish and chips. If you go over there and bring some back for me, I will do a cartwheel for you.'

'I think not,' I answered. 'I don't feel hungry at all.'

'Are you sure?' she said. 'Their fish and chips are very, very tasty. And if you bring me some, I will do a cartwheel and then walk around on my hands.'

I shook my head.

Whiterock Road was not that far away, I said to myself. If the girl wanted fish and chips so much, why didn't she just go over there and get them herself? I started to get angry and was about to say something curt, to tell her to go away and stop bothering me. Then I noticed she had no pocket book, and realized she was probably did not have any money on her.

I reminded myself that, at this girl's age, Bridget was a penniless immigrant who spent all her time working as a scullery maid in a foreign land. She never had the opportunity to relax and just sit on a park bench, eating fish and chips, while watching the sun go down. I had money, the little girl was hungry,and I would be dead tomorrow. Why not buy her some food? I was about to tell her I would get her some fish and chips, when she suddenly changed the topic.

'Well, if you are not hungry and you did not come here to be alone with somebody, why did you come here?

'I came to visit someone,' I replied, gesturing towards the short row of grave markers. 'To wish her well and say goodbye.'

'Now you're the one being silly,' she said. 'Nobody ever comes here to visit like that - not at this part of the cemetery.'

I realized that she was probably correct. Everyone in the paupers' graves and everyone who might have known them had died a long time ago.

'Nobody's been here for a visit like that,' she said, 'in a very long time…' She shut her eyes and wrinkled her brow in thought. She opened her eyes and added, '…not for more than half a century.'

'So, who did you come to visit?' she asked. 'And what made you come here now?'

'That is a long story,' I said, 'and not a very pleasant one.'

'That's alright,' she told me. 'I like stories…especially scary ones.'

I did not feel like discussing Bridget and my family with a complete stranger, and I was again starting to feel a little annoyed.

'It will be dark in a little while, and your family will be getting worried about you,' I announced. 'I also have to leave now,' I said, as I started to rise from the bench.

'Wait.' she said. 'Before you go, would you like me to do a cartwheel for you?'

I wanted to be rid of her, so I nodded for her to proceed. She smiled slyly.

She then began a short run across the grass. She ended the run with a small skip, twisted her body slightly and brought down both hands sideways to swing her legs over her body. After her feet struck the ground she stood up straight and looked over at me, to make sure she had my complete attention. She then bent her knees slightly and sprang up into a full back flip. She kept both her arms extended straight out from the sides of her body, like the wings of an airplane. When she landed, her feet touched the ground as lightly as a falling feather.

I clapped as she came running back to me.

'I gave you a cartwheel, and also a backflip,' she announced. 'Now you have to tell me your story – or else bring me some fish and chips.' She sat back down on the bench, and again smiled at me.

I was impressed by her gymnastic skill, and no longer felt annoyed with her. I also realized that it might not be a bad thing for me to talk to somebody, even - or especially - somebody who was a complete stranger, about what had happened to Bridget.

I gave the young girl a bowdlerized version of the long-ago events. She did not interrupt me once. When I finished my account of the life and death of poor Bridget O'Reilly, my eyes felt wet and I was afraid that I might start crying again.

"You were right," she said slowly. 'That was not a pleasant story. It was not a scary story, just a very sad one.'

'But it shouldn't make you feel bad, at least not about yourself,' she continued. 'It was not your fault. It all happened a long time ago, and you had nothing to do with what happened to Bridget. I don't think that you would ever do anything like that to anyone. You seem like a very nice human, Angus. In fact, I think that you probably made Bridget happy by taking the trouble to come here and visit her.'

'Thank you,' I said, giving her a sad smile. 'It's very nice of you say that… What is your name, little girl?

"I am not a girl, you silly' she replied. 'I am wildf…,' she hesitated, and then continued, 'I mean my name is… Wildflower.' She thought for a second, and announced, 'In fact, my full name is… Primrose Wildflower.'

'But you can call me Rose," she added.

I stood up, bowed to her and said in a very formal voice, 'Well, it is truly a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Primrose Wildflower.'

Rose got up from the bench and made her own little bow.

'Indeed, the pleasure is all mine, Mister Angus MacTavish,' she replied in an equally formal voice. She looked so enchanting that I completely overlooked the fact that I had never told her my family's name.

Then I noticed she remained in her bowed over position, and was staring intently at the ground. She got down on both knees, and began running her hands over a patch of grass in front of the bench. She raised her head and stared up at me.

'I sense tears,' she said. 'You cried for Bridget."

She stood up and continued to stare at me.

'For as long as I've been here, nobody has ever come to this part of our cemetery and given it the gift of a tear or two. That must have made Bridget happy. Now I have to do something for you, something more than a cartwheel.'

Rose closed her eyes and tilted her head sideways, in the direction of the markers. After a minute or two, she reopened her eyes and looked at me with a big smile.

'You made Bridget very happy, Angus,' she said. She says to tell you not to worry about her anymore. She was very unhappy when she first arrived, until sometime later when another person tried to visit her. He was very old, and when he got out of his car, a nurse helped him into a wheelchair. She pushed him around different paths in this section of the cemetery, like they were looking for something. They didn't get as far as this row, because the man told the nurse that she was probably getting tired. They got back in the car and left.'

'Bridget said that the man was her son, and had been trying to find her grave. She said that his treatment of the nurse showed that he inherited more from Bridget's side of the family than from his father's side. She was sorry that he didn't find her grave, but she was no longer so unhappy as she used to be.

'Bridget told me to give you a message. She said that her son, and his son, and everyone down to you inherited most of what you are from her side of the family. She said to tell you that you are not a monster, and that there is not a drop of monster blood in your veins. You just have the ability to recognize monsters – to see things as they really are.'

'Bridget said that your tears made her and everyone around her feel good. In fact, she says that she was now treated something like a star, like a famous stage actress.'

Rose paused a moment, and frowned. 'I don't know if that is really a good thing, Angus. When all the camera people were here, one of them was a very pretty lady that everyone called the star. She even had her own trailer, parked by the Leisure Center. When she was with the group, everyone smiled at her and said nice things to her. But when she went into her trailer, the people stopped smiling and some of them said very bad things about her.'

Rose shrugged her shoulders and said, 'Oh well, Bridget might learn a thing or two.'

'But for now,' Rose continued, 'she wants you to know that you made her very happy, and that she wants for you to feel good too. She said you deserve it.'

Rose stretched out her hand to give mine a sympathetic pat. The moment our fingers touched, however, she gave a startled cry and quickly pulled back her hand. She took a step backwards, and gave me a good long look, with her eyes running up and down my body several times. When her finally eyes returned to my face, I answered her wordless glare with a very puzzled look.

She stared at me another moment, and then abruptly turned around. She marched back to the grave marker and stamped her foot.

'Bridget O'Reilly,' she said sternly, 'and all you others, why did you lie to me?'

She again leaned her head sideways, and I saw her frown gradually disappear. Although I would not describe her new look as happy, at least it was no longer angry. She got down on her hands and knees, and began feeling all around the patch of grass where I had first stood and cried. She lifted her hands to her nose and smelled them, then looked over at me.

She got up and came back to me. She grabbed both my hands, looked into my eyes, and deeply inhaled.

'I knew it,' she declared. 'I thought I smelled fish, and I was right!'

Rose squeezed my hands even tighter, and continued to peer into my eyes.

'You're definitely human,' she declared as she let go of me, 'but Bridget lied about you not having a drop of monster blood in you. And, it's not just a drop, it's definitely a whole lot more! She looked back at the grave site.

'And you didn't shed just one or two tears, she continued. 'You gave us a whole lot more.' Rose closed her eyes, like she was concentrating very hard. She then opened her eyes and began to talk, much more slowly.

'Technically speaking, Bridget did not actually lie to me. She lied to you. She only tricked me. She tricked me, me into carrying her lie over to your ears.' The look on her face was a mix of amazement and perplexion. 'What a clever little girl. She'll make a very good star.'

'But what should I do?, Rose asked, more to herself than to me. She was silent for a few minutes.

'Bridget did what she did with good intentions,' she proclaimed. 'While you, you didn't do anything bad.' Rose glanced again at the grave site. 'In fact, you gave us one of the biggest gifts I have ever seen. You gave it freely, with no selfish motive.'

Rose grabbed my right hand, pulled me over to the grave site, and again stamped her foot on the ground.

'Bridget, all of you, pay attention," she said. 'Angus gave us a very big gift, and now he's got to get back something equally big – not just a lie!

Rose paused a moment, and announced, "It doesn't matter what anyone else told you. I'm the one in charge now. Get to it!

I thought it was my imagination, but the ground seemed to shake a little. Then, first my feet, my legs, and finally my entire body felt a little tingle.

'Thank you,' said Rose. Then she turned and looked straight into my eyes.

'Very good,' she said in a satisfied manner, 'now you can do more than simply recognize monsters. You can now also get inside their heads and read their minds.' She giggled. 'And most of them - but not all - won't even know it is happening!'

'Not only that,' she added, 'you will be able to fight them, and..."

Behind me, the sun was just setting below the horizon. The last of its rays shined into Rose's dark eyes, and transformed them to flaming red.

'…You will be able to destroy them.' Then she giggled again.

'You are going to have some interesting experiences, Angus MacTavish,' she went on. 'It is sooo boring here. Maybe I can get my people to let me accompany you, sometime in the future. What do you think?' She smiled sweetly at me.

By that time, I was thinking that I was not talking to just a little girl with big gymnastic skills and an even bigger imagination. I tried to recall how far away was the Belfast Mental Hospital.

"Look, Rose,' I told her. 'It is now dark, and this is not a safe place for you to be. Why don't I walk you over to your home, or to a policeman?

'That won't be necessary,' she said, as she pointed behind me. 'My people are already here.'

"I turned around. I was uncertain whether I would see a pair of anxious parents, or a pair of grim orderlies carrying a small straight jacket. Instead, I saw no one."

"I turned back around, but now Rose had disappeared!"

"I looked to the left and to the right. I saw no one. 'Rose,' I called out as I started moving among grave markers, 'where are you? It's not safe here.'"

"After a few minutes of searching and calling out her name, I heard her voice. It sounded very faint, as if from far away."

'Goodbye Angus' she called. 'It was very nice meeting you.'

"Her voice was rapidly fading, and I could barely make out her final sentences: 'Always remember, you are not a monster. You are a monster fighter.'"

"I started to run in the direction of the fading voice. Then I must have tripped over something. I fell and hit my head on one of the grave markers. The next thing I knew, the sun was shining in my eyes. It was Sunday morning, I a big bump on the side of my head and a bad headache. I was uncertain whether my memories of Rose were simply a dream, or the result of a concussion."

"I got up, brushed myself off, and started to head back towards the cemetery entrance. I stopped for a moment, and returned to say one last goodbye to Bridget."

"When I got to her paupers' grave, I discovered it was now surrounded by a large ring of pale yellow primroses. I plucked one and put it on the lapel of my jacket"

"I felt much better. I began whistling as I walked back to the cemetery entrance. I hailed a cab at the corner of Falls Road and Donegall Road, and returned to my hotel."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight. **

"When I returned to my hotel," said MacTavish, "I again took stock of my life, and reviewed the plans I had made earlier. Cambridge had approved a temporary leave for me to study in Asia and improve my language skills, before submitting my dissertation. I had intended to spend most of that time at the University of Bombay and the University of Hong Kong. The family firm had offices and business records at both cities."

I now saw no reason to alter these plans.

After checking out of my hotel, I went to the Belfast docks and took the ferry to Liverpool. When boarding the ferry, a young woman in front of me stumbled and dropped her suitcase. I grabbed it before it fell into the water and returned it to her. She was about my age, had dark red fair, pale skin and a lot of freckles. She had a pretty face, and would have been very attractive, except for her long hair being piled up on the top of her head in a monstrous beehive hairdo.

When she thanked me, she spoke with a broad North Country accent. We started up a conversation which lasted all of the eight-hour voyage.

Her name was Mary O'Donnell. She had just graduated from the University of Manchester with a degree in Chemistry, and was returning from a visit with relatives. Her parents had emigrated to Liverpool before she was born. Her father worked for the Liverpool gas works and her mother was a domestic for a well off family connected with the Cunard Line.

Mary had received a state scholarship to attend University and supported herself while studying with a variety of part time jobs. In addition to being a Teaching Assistant, she also did shampooing, cutting and hair styling at Manchester beauty salons, and worked summers as a waitress in a Liverpool club. It was there that she met her boyfriend, a waiter who sometimes filled in as a drummer with different bands. She invited me to come to the club. Her boyfriend would be playing that week with a group called Johnny and the Moondogs. I declined.

Mary had plans to go to Australia for graduate study. She had been offered a job as T.A. in Biochemistry at Monash University, which had recently been founded in Melbourne. She had also been accepted for graduate study at Oxford, which her advisor strongly urged her to attend. Mary probably would have done so, but she was close friends with an Assistant Professor of Organic Chemistry who was one of the few women on the Manchester University faculty. Mary considered her the most brilliant person she had ever met, and she had urged Mary to accept the Monash offer.

'She told me,' Mary said, 'that there would be much better career opportunities for a female chemist in Australia than in the United Kingdom.'

'Here in Britain, no matter how good a woman is at chemistry, no matter how good a teacher she is, the only thing she can do after she graduates is to wind up cleaning some male chemist's test tubes, whether or not she is at a University or at a company's research laboratory.'

Mary and I met as strangers but departed as friends. When the ferry reached Liverpool, we wished each other well, and said we hoped to meet again someday.

From Liverpool, I went directly to London and made arrangements to take the next available flight to Bombay. Two days later, I was boarding a BOAC Comet headed to Asia, with stops at Zurich, Rome, Beirut and Dubai. Before I left for the airport, I stopped to purchase some reading material.

I bought paperback reprints of H. G. Wells'_ The War of the Worlds_ and George Chesney's _The Battle of Dorking,_ both of which I remembered reading as a child. On an impulse, I picked up a newly published American novel named _On the Road_. It was a tale of two young fellows who just dropped everything to travel around the United States. This was in the late 1950s, a decade before the conception of a gap year. Neither I nor anyone I knew at University could even conceive of engaging in such an unstructured journey, like a pair of tramps.

In Old Angus' time, it took more than a month to travel from London to India. Several days after I left Heathrow, I stepped down onto the landing field at Sahar International Airport on the outskirts of Bombay.

The University of Bombay with its Victorian Gothic architecture looked like a transplanted version of Cambridge. I was assigned a very small room on the Seventh Floor of a grey sandstone building which housed the University's History Department. It had a wonderful view of the Back Bay, but no elevator.

Bombay is located on the south tip of a peninsula, like an inverted version of San Francisco. The central business district of the city and its working waterfront are on the east side of the peninsula, facing towards Bombay Harbour and the continent. The University was located on the west side of the peninsula, a few blocks away from the Back Bay and the Indian Ocean.

I obtained lodgings at a nearby boarding house located on the shore, and would often go swimming on days when I was not at the University. There was a small beach on the Back Bay set off for swimming. Large signs warned of sharks and advised everyone to stay in the shallows close to shore. I ignored them, and swam around the entire Bay. Some days I ventured into the Indian Ocean, going as far north as Cumballa Hill. The sharks never bothered me.

Occasionally, I would swim past a school of Bombay Ducks, the local name for a species of small pink lizardfish. Whenever that happened, they would all begin to follow me, as if I were their new leader.

The University faculty, for the most part, were friendly and very helpful. I received lots of useful leads for my historical research, but very puzzled looks when I inquired about the best place to receive lessons in Kalari Payat.

I had never been very keen on rugby, cricket and other traditional team games at Eton or Cambridge, but I excelled at gymnastics and fencing, particularly the epee. One of my teachers suggested that I look into Ju-Jitsu. Numerous students and faculty at both places were veterans who had served in the Far East. Many of them, especially those who had been captured and interned during 1939 and afterwards, still bitterly hated Japan and all things Japanese. Some of them criticized the Americans and General McArthur for not executing the Emperor, his entire family, and all his advisors. A few even snubbed and insulted the small number of Japanese students who began attending in the postwar years.

Some of the veterans, however, went in the opposite direction. They devoted themselves to studying Japan, especially the reasons for its rise to dominate the Far East.

One teacher who concentrated his efforts on studying the evolution of the martial spirit in the Far East invited me to accompany him to a dojo he attended. I was immediately hooked, and soon went on to learn and master kendo. In Bombay, it cost me many months of training, several scars, and almost my left eye, before I learned to handle properly the urumi.

The local officials of the family firm were also helpful. They knew few details of the firm's very early operations, and simply gave me the keys to a small office in one of their warehouses which contained the old company records. The boxes were covered with decades' worth of dust, and, of course, were not indexed or even sorted in any discernible manner.

Eventually I found and studied the earliest records, which preceded the First Opium War. It turned out that the first visits to Asia were made by Old Angus' father, whom I dubbed Very Old Angus. There was very little about his activities. He sailed from Glasgow in the 1830s, engaged in trade in India and China (and possibly also sailed to North America), then returned to Glasgow a very rich man several years later.

More than a decade later, Very Old Angus sent Old Angus and his wife to the Far East to begin the firm's official operations.

I was most interested to come across some second-hand accounts by company officials of Old Angus's peculiar family arrangements. The girl he brought back from India - who might have been Young Angus's biological mother – was referred to several times. The papers gave her several different, but similar, last names. All the records, however, used the same first name, Mumtaz. She originally came from a village near the Valley of the Flowers in Uttarakhand. The Valley is now a National Park and World Heritage Site, but then it was primarily known as the gateway to a rugged mountain pass occupied by a Temple of Shaolin Monks.

The original home of Mumtaz, and possibly still some of some of her descendants, was in the far north, very close to the borders of China and Nepal, on the southern edge of the Himalaya Mountains.

I decided to expand my research, and began planning a visit to do research in the government archives at New Delhi.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine. **

"During my initial months in India I had made two long-distance train trips," continued MacTavish, "to visit the company's subsidiary offices in Calcutta and Madras. Both times I had taken the express routes, which had full air conditioning, with special dining and sleeping facilities."

By the time I decided to travel to New Delhi, I had become more adjusted to the Indian climate, and more interested in local Indian life. I started venturing out of the European section of Bombay, and exploring the native sections. I enjoyed visiting the native shops, market places and bazaars, and was soon automatically noting and comparing their different types of customers and different types of goods, as well as the prices asked, negotiated, and finally paid for them.

I was uncertain whether this was the result of my graduate studies of the economies of Britain, India and China, or whether it was part of my genetic heritage that was starting to emerge, after years of being cossetted as an academic at Eton and Cambridge.

If the latter, this was one part of my family heritage I did not disavow.

In fact, I discovered that I rather enjoyed it.

When I booked my tickets for the trip to New Delhi, I chose to avoid the express route, which would have gotten me there in only a day and a half. Instead, I decided to take a series of local trains, which would take several days. These would stop at intervening cities for several hours, giving me time to hop off and explore the local bazaars of Udhna, Vadodara, Bhopal, Jodhpur and other places.

My train left Victoria Station on time, but then was immediately shunted onto a side track to make way for express trains. I had brought along a good supply of paperbacks, and was starting to get absorbed in _Anna Karenina_ when I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye. An incoming train was similarly stalled on an adjacent track, and woman in the passenger car across from me had opened its window and was frantically waving to somebody in my direction.

I had only enough time to register that she was wearing a green dress and had red hair pulled back into a tight bun, when my train car jerked forward and continued its journey.

The first main stop was Suryapur, where a small number of food vendors were allowed to enter the train (after paying a fee to the conductor), and provide a spicier alternative to the dining car's rather bland menu. The vendor's offerings were a mix of North Indian and South Indian dishes similar to that found in Bombay, although much less spicy and considerably more expensive than the dishes offered by vendors and restaurants outside the train station.

Suryapur, like Bombay, was a coastal city, but as the train headed inland, I noticed distinct changes in the food at subsequent stops. There was not only a decrease in fish. The vendors who came inside the train, like those who presented their wares in the bazaars, now offered more and more North India dishes and spices, and very little associated with South India cuisine. Less coconut, tamarind, and snake gourd; more kebabs, kormas and koftas. This trend increased, the further north the train traveled.

Curries and biryanis, however, were ubiquitous.

While exploring the bazaar during our stop in Baroda, I happened to come across one of the other train passengers. He was a young Asian of mixed race man in a western suit. He had looked vaguely familiar the time I saw him on the train, shortly after it left Bombay.

He was sitting with two other persons. One was a very elderly Chinese man with a long white moustache, wearing a traditional Chinese cap, jacket and robe, who gave the appearance of not wanting to be disturbed. The other was a young girl in her early teens, with long straight black hair, wearing a green silk cheongsam. She was also wearing a jade pendant on a thin silver chain, which I thought unsuitable for someone so young.

When I gave the young man a brief nod, he glanced at his older companion and then did not give me any sign of recognition. A day later, I say the young man and his older companion walking through the streets of Suryapur, but I did not approach them.

Later, when I saw the young fellow alone in the bazaar in Baroda, he waved to me. I went over and we began talking. It was near noon, so we went to a shop for kabob and a chat. His name was Edward Lee, and he was a student at the University of Bombay studying mathematics. We had never met, but we must have seen each other on the Bombay campus. He apologized for not talking to me earlier. He said that his elderly traveling companion was a family business associate named Lo-See Sheng, who wanted Edward to call him "grandfather." He did not speak any English and felt very uncomfortable with strangers. The girl was the man's granddaughter, Gongzhu Sheng.

Edward told me that their families had co-founded the firm of Li & Sheng in the early 1900s. It had originated in Shanghai, and then moved to Hong Kong after the start of World War II. It specialized in trading jewelry, gems and semi-precious stones. Edward was accompanying his two companions while the old man and his granddaughter traveled around India, visiting the firm's regional offices and the shops of their major customers.

'I rather guess that they are looking for ways to handle the expected increase in future business,' I opined, 'now that India and China seem intent on forming a non-aligned block against the former Western imperialists.'

Edward paused, looked around, and began speaking in a very low voice.

'Quite the contrary,' he said. 'Don't tell anyone, but the firm is preparing to shut down its operations in India. Grandfather believes that India's support of Tibet's rebellion makes war between India and China inevitable. If that happens, he believes there will be a massive backlash against all the Chinese in India, like the pogroms the Nazis started against the Jews.'

'Grandfather says that it won't matter whether they are communists, socialists or capitalists,' he added. 'They will all become targets of mobs violence and government round ups. Just like the Germans in Britain and the Japanese in America.'

'Nobody with any Chinese blood will be safe,' he added, even people like myself, whose father and grandfather had married Indian women.'

I had told Edward of my research, and he offered to ask his grandfather about whether the firm might have any relevant records. We parted, and I continued my exploration of the Indian shops, their goods and their customers.

As the train traveled further inland, I had also noticed changes in the clothing of the passengers. I had taken First Class accommodations, so almost all men in my car wore European style suits, while the women wore either Western dresses or expensive saris.

As we traveled further from the coast, however, more and more of the passengers, especially those in the II and III class cars, wore native clothing. More and more were wearing the apparel I saw as I visited the native markets: dhotis, mundis, sherwanis, salwars, and cholis, as well as the traditional sari.

My family instincts again emerged, and I found myself studying the texture and design of the passengers' different types of clothing. I already had an idea of the garments' costs, from my visits to the stores and markets of Bombay. I took note of increasingly higher prices at stores and bazaars of the inland cities, the further the train travelled from the coast.

Now I also found myself trying to estimate the amount and cost of the different type of fabrics used in each garment. I wondered whether the cotton had come from Egypt or the United States, whether the cloth had been woven in Manchester or Bhilwari, and how much it had cost to transport the finished product from factory to wholesaler and then to the final retailer.

I assumed that everything brought into the interior of India came by train. The roads were horrible, and almost all of the lorries I saw looked like they had been built before the war.

Even though my local train had to give way to express trains, it was still a passenger train and had priority over all the numerous freight trains I saw waiting on sidings. Occasionally our line passed close enough by freight rail yards that I could observe their operations. In most yards, the freight cars were shunted around the different sidings by short locomotives, but at very small rail yards, elephants were used to push the freight cars into their proper locations.

Our train also had to make frequent stops to replenish its supply of coal for the steam engine. At most cities, coal would be quickly poured down into the coal cars by gravity chutes. At rural coal stops, however, teams of men would shovel the coal from trackside piles up into the coal cars, a much lengthier process.

One such stop took more than an hour. I started walking around the train, and looking at two other freight trains waiting at sidings to be refueled. I even felt a little frustrated, as I thought of all the money being wasted by having all their inventory just sitting there, unused, in the stationary freight cars.

'You know,' a voice behind me said, as if reading my mind 'if this railroad were using diesel engines, all these trains could all be refueled and out of here in ten minutes flat.'

I turned and found I was being addressed by a tall, heavy set man wearing a white linen suit, cowboy boots, and a tan, broad brimmed cowboy hat. I had seen him on the train, but we had never met, since he had a reserved seat in one of the air conditioned cars.

He introduced himself as Jim Broadacres, an American from Houston, Texas. I told him my name, and learned that Jim and his daughter Susie were, like myself, traveling to New Delhi.

Our train's coal cars were nearly full, so we continued our conversation as we strolled back to our train. I inquired why he and his daughter had chosen not to travel by an express passenger train, like most Americans.

'We wanted to take a longer look at the country,' he answered.

Jim explained that he had been born and raised in a small town in the western part of Texas, and the deserts of India reminded him of his homeland.

Jim had only a few years of education, when he left school for a job as cleaning boy on a crew working at an oil well outside of Plano, Texas. He spent the rest of his youth working at different jobs at different oil wells, and then formed his own firm at the age of 19. He became a wildcatter, drilling for oil outside of established oil fields, in places where no one knew any oil existed.

'I had a lot of years of good and bad luck,' he told me, 'mostly bad. Finally, when all of my creditors had either abandoned me or started lawsuits to take possession of my drilling equipment, I hit gold, so to speak… Black gold.'

His well, and the others he drilled on nearby land where he had obtained leases and options under different names to evade his creditors, did very well. They produced enough oil for him to pay off his creditors, and then went on to make him a very rich man. Eventually he sold his firm to a large oil company based in Philadelphia, and took a position as one of their corporate officers.

'But I never took very well to working inside an office all the time,' he told me.

Jim eventually shifted over to become a general trouble shooter for the firm's international operations. He had just been involved in negotiations at Tehran with British Petroleum to operate an Anglo-American consortium in Persia, and was now taking a look around India for possible drilling sites.

'There's nothing in South India,' he told me, 'except coal. But my experts tell me that there something in the Miocene limestone basin offshore of Bombay - and my gut instinct tells me that they might be right.'

He told me about oil companies making underground, and under sea bottom, explosions, and using their echoes to map subsurface geology and find potential oil deposits. I realized that this explained mysterious underwater booming noises I would occasionally sense while swimming along the Bombay shore.

Jim was now heading north, to meet with other experts and take a look at the Indus Basin lying to the west of New Delhi.

As we approached the train steps, we were met by his daughter, a pretty young blond in her late teens. Her hair was medium length, and bound into a short ponytail tied with a narrow, off-white silk ribbon. She wore a dress and shoes the same color. Jim introduced us, and as we re-entered the train he asked me to join them later for supper in the dining car.

"Please?" said Susie, who smiled and gave me a flash of dazzling white teeth.

As I looked into her blue-grey eyes, I felt compelled to accept the invitation.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten. **

When I arrived at the dining car, Jim and Susan were already seated, and facing each other. Jim sat closer to the edge of the bench, so I sat down next to Susan. She had put on a different dress, and had removed the ribbon from her pony tail to let her blonde hair fall loose around her face.

When the turbaned waiter brought us our menus, I asked him what was good tonight. I accepted his recommendation and ordered laal maans, a Rajasthani curried mutton stew. Jim did not bother looking at the menu. He ordered a grilled steak, very rare, with a baked potato and "a big glass of bourbon." Susan asked for a Caesar Salad.

After the waiter left, Jim asked where I gone to University. He appeared to believe that St. Andrews was a notch below Cambridge.

He told me that Susan had finished her first year at Rice University in Texas. He preferred Rice over the University of Texas, because it was "closer to home," and "U of T is too full of those Austin liberals." He said the last word with the same mixture of scorn and derision that he had used when he mentioned the word "coal" in our initial conversation. He bragged that Susie had pledged to Kappa something or other, which was evidently a prestigious women's university club.

I asked Susan what she was studying. She told me that she had not yet chosen a major, but was leaning toward "Fashion Design."

She seemed a bit surprised, but pleased, when I followed up by asking her opinion about the relative merits of textiles made with American and Egyptian cotton. She, in turn, surprised me by starting a very intelligent discussion of the pros and cons of short staple American cotton and long staple Egyptian cotton. She included some facts I did know, particularly about the rare, very expensive, extra-long staple cotton of South America, which my family firm had never traded. She had used it when she made an evening gown as a project for one of her classes.

'You shouldn't look so surprised, Angus,' her father said. 'Just because Susie is pretty doesn't mean that she's not smart. And don't forget, Texas isn't just oil country. It's also cotton country.'

'Susie is a true Texas girl.' he continued, 'who knows and loves everything about Texas. In fact, he favorite music is Texas music.'

'Daddy,' she said, 'please don't do this, again.'

'The first song she ever learned,' he said, was "Deep in the Heart of Texas." I used to sing it to her when she as a little girl. I'd bounce her on my knee, and we'd clap our hands together, in tune with the song.'

Susan looked both embarrassed and annoyed, but Jim started to sing: 'The stars at night, are big and bright, …'

Fortunately, the waiter interrupted Jim's rendition by bringing our plates of food to our table.

'What about you?' Susan hurriedly asked me as the waiter left. 'Daddy already told me about you studying the history of your family business. What will you do when you graduate from Cambridge? Will you join the family firm?'

I started to explain that it wasn't "my" family firm, and that I was only a poor cousin of the branch of the family who owned and ran the firm. I said that I had depended upon scholarships to finance my education. I also insisted that I was more interested in academic life than in business. Depending upon the reception of my dissertation, I stood a very good chance of being offered a position as Lecturer at Cambridge.

"Don't be a fool,' her father told me. 'Professors make peanuts, barely enough to live on, much less to support a family.'

When I started to explain that not everyone considered money the most important thing in life, he cut me off.

'Of course it's not,' he said. 'It's power and influence that really counts. Money is simply the measuring stick that most people use to add up how much you have, how successful and powerful you are… And it's also the means of assuring that you can give your wife and children the life they deserve.'

He paused to take a long drink of bourbon.

'Look,' he continued. 'When I called you a fool I didn't mean to say that you were stupid. You obviously aren't. But you are deluding yourself, if you think that you can be happy if you spend the rest of your life just being a professor.'

'I've had my eye on you, ever since this trip started. I've watched you walk around and explore the different stores and markets whenever this train makes a stop. I've seen you haggle for the best bargain when you stop for a bite to eat. When we had our first little talk, you immediately started quizzing me about oil, gasoline, and about the costs and differences of using trucks or trains to carry goods. Son, you're a born businessman.'

He took another drink of his bourbon.

'And don't give me any hogwash about you just being a poor relation,' he said. 'You're just two funerals away from being a Lord. Your family firm is run by your two brothers – and they're not doing a very good job of it. They're keeping the firm limited to simply importing and wholesaling goods, and only within the Sterling Area - what used to be the old British Empire. That needs to be changed.'

I did not like the idea that Jim or anybody else had been keeping an eye on me, or knew anything about my family. I was, however, definitely interested in hearing his opinion of the firm's business strategy. From our earlier discussion of trains and lorries, I'd realized that he was a shrewd businessman, and especially well versed on logistics. In retailing, logistics is crucial.

I nodded for him to continue.

'Suez showed everybody that the British Empire and the British pound are definitely on their way down," he said. 'and that America and the American dollar are on their way up, to ruling the entire world. The only thing stopping us now is the Commies, and even they're beginning to fight each other.'

I mentally noted that Jim, like all the other Americans I'd ever talked to, always avoided using the phrase "American Empire ."

'It's the same way with coal and oil,' he continued. 'Few people in Britain or Europe realize it yet, but coal is a thing of the past. The future belongs to oil, and automobiles… and shopping centers.' For the next half hour, he explained how cheap oil and cheap automobiles were letting everyone move out of the cities. It was happening in America, and would soon be happening in Britain and Europe.

It was during that conversation that I first heard the phrase "shopping mall" for the first time in my life.

That conversation would change my life, but not in the manner which Jim intended. His main motive became apparent, when he started talking about how important it was for a man of business to have the right type of woman as his wife.

I turned to look at Susan, expecting to her to be embarrassed and to her admonish her father again. Instead, she just smiled and stared intently into my eyes.

'What about it, Angus?' she asked. 'Is there anybody special in your life?'

I became flustered, and started to say that I was already somewhat involved with somebody, and… Susan's smile grew larger, and she tilted her head.

"So, what is the lucky girl's name?' inquired Susan in a skeptical manner. 'What is she like, and how did you two meet?'

'Her name is… Ruth,… Ruth Grimsby,' I stammered, picking the first female name I could think of . It belonged to a secretary at the History Department who was married to one of the University's Geology Professors. I had attended his retirement party a week before I left Bombay.

'She is very nice,' I said, trying anxiously to recall a plausible female image, 'and has lovely short brown hair and very dark eyes. She's also a student at the University of Bombay, and will be waiting for me when I return from New Delhi.' Actually, Ruth and her husband were now on a voyage to Auckland, New Zealand, where they would be visiting her husband's family.

'She may be nice,' said Susan, 'but nice doesn't mean special. If she was, she wouldn't let you be traveling by yourself for so long.'

I started to say something about Ruth having "prior commitments," but my voice trailed off as I racked my brain to find some plausible sounding details.

Susan gave a little laugh, and again stared at me. Her eyes now seemed more grey than blue. She looked adorable.

'Angus,' she said, 'tell us more about this Ruth Grimsby. If she's so special to you, then you must know her favorite color, and what she likes for breakfast.'

'Tell us, Angus.'


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven. **

'Yes,' said Jim, with a big smile on his face, 'Why don't you go ahead and tell us about her, son. What is your special girl's favorite color?'

I started to stammer out a sentence consisting largely of "um" and "well," when suddenly my psychic damn burst.

'Marmite,' I blurted.

'Marmite?' asked Jim, 'What is that, some kind of color like orange jelly?'

'Marmite on toast, or a croissant,' I answered, 'with scrambled eggs. That's what she loves to have for breakfast, with Earl Grey Tea. I, personally think that it, the Marmite, tastes vile, but she loves it.'

'Her favorite color is green,' I continued, 'which is the same color of her eyes, and nicely sets off her red hair. She has a beautiful smile which is just a little crooked, and if you look very closely, you can see a tiny little chip has broken off the corner of one of her front teeth. It happened when she was ten years old, and got into a dispute with her two older brothers, which turned into a shoving match, over who was more powerful – Superman or Wonder Woman.'

'We met on a ferry,' I said, 'and that evening we went on our first date. We went dancing at a club in Liverpool where she had once worked as a waitress. The band's drummer kept making passes at her, which got me very angry, and a fight started, and his mates joined in. The lead guitarist was a big bloke, but I punched him in the nose, and I think that I might have broken it.'

'She washes her hair twice a week,' I continued, 'and always uses the same brand of strawberry scented shampoo. She rinses it twice, and then wraps it with a big yellow towel, but it takes forever to dry, because her hair is so long and because the towel is old and threadbare, but she doesn't want to throw it away because it is her favorite towel because was a gift from her late grandmother. She now wears her hair in a very tight bun, because of the hot weather, but when she removes her hair pins and shakes her head…'

I paused to catch my breath, and to wonder where my conversation was going.

Sam and Susan had both stopped smiling. They were both silent, looking at me in an odd manner. Susan had also moved her chair an inch or two away from me, over to the edge of the table. Sam finally broke the silence.

'Angus,' said Sam very slowly, and with a slight slur, 'didn't you just tell us a bit earlier that your Ruth had short brown hair – and that she her eyes were dark?'

'Well,.. um…' I improvised, '…her hair is actually a sort of reddish brown, and… er… her eyes are a very dark shade of green… and what I meant to say was that she is just beginning to think of cutting her hair short, because of the climate.'

'And what's all this about Liverpool?' he asked. 'I thought you said that you two met in Bombay, at the University.'

I was trying to think of some remotely plausible explanation, when Susan cut in.

'Forget it, Daddy,' she said. 'It doesn't matter. He's not interested.' Her eyes now looked a clear, icy blue.

The waiter came over to our table, and inquired whether we wished to see the dessert menu.

'No thank you,' said Susan, a bit crossly. 'I've lost my appetite." She got up and told me, 'Goodnight, Angus. I hope that you and your Ruth Grimsby are very happy together.' She did not sound particularly sincere.

'Goodnight, Daddy," she said, giving him a peck on his cheek. Then she left, slamming the door shut on her way out of the dining car.

As I turned back to face Jim, I noticed that the dining car was now nearly deserted. The only other occupied table had three persons, Edward Lee and his two companions. There was a large blue and white porcelain teapot in the center of their table.

Edward had his back to us, but the old man and his granddaughter were facing in our general direction. The old man stared straight ahead, apparently concentrating upon the steaming cup of tea he held with both his hands. His face, as usual, was completely impassive. The young girl had her head turned to look directly at us, and had a slight smile on her face.

'Just like her mother,' said Jim, as he drank the last of the bourbon in his glass.

'Women,' he continued, his voice now rather slurred. 'I'll never understand them, even if I live to be two hundred!' Jim waved the waiter over, and ordered another bourbon.

I told Jim that it was getting late, and the train had an early stop at Kota the next morning. I said I knew that he would understand that I wanted an early start, to compare the differences between the morning and the afternoon bazaars. He nodded in apparent understanding, but appeared to be barely listening. I bade him good night.

I left the dining car by the end opposite to the one Susan had used.

Instead of going straight to my sleeper, I walked through several other cars, used a toilet facility, and then went partway back. I stopped at an empty open platform, and checked to see that no one was watching. I climbed to the top of the car, and walked just beyond the sight of the platform.

I sat down on the center of the car roof and assumed a lotus position.

I always found it very restful to simply sit there, with my head empty of thoughts, feeling the wind against my face and body, and watching the moonlit landscape unfold around the train.

About a half hour later, I noticed the train begin to round a big curve which led to a bridge crossing a branch of the Chamtel River. I heard a door open, and then some low murmuring voices. I could not, and did not try to, make out the words, but they sounded amorous. That was not unusual. Then there was complete silence for several minutes.

As the train crossed over the bridge, I saw something large – about the size of a man's body - fall from the platform into the river.

I again heard the sound of the passenger car door opening and closing.

After the door closed, I remained sitting, but stopped meditating and started thinking. I eventually got up, walked to the other side of the car and climbed down.

Early the next morning, I was already standing by the door, listening to the conductors gossip, as the train slowed down and pulled into Kota Junction. One of the waiters had disappeared during the night, probably leaving the train during the refueling stop.

Sam appeared, with his pink face looking none the worse for the large amount of bourbon he drank last night. But he had a wide elastic bandage wrapped around his knee, and he was using a cane. He told me that he had fallen from his bunk and slightly injured his leg during the night.

Sam did not discuss last night's dinner, but asked me for a favor. He said that he had made arrangements to pick up a valuable piece of jewelry from a Kota dealer that afternoon. Sam asked if I would be visiting the jewelry market that afternoon, and, if so, could I pick the package up for him? It was already paid for, so it would simply involve me carrying a small light package back to the train.

Jim had already taught me many new things, and I already planned to explore the jewelry districts before I returned to the train. I agreed, and Sam gave me a slip of paper with the dealer's address. He told me that he would phone the dealer to say I would be there between 5 and 6 o'clock.

Just then the conductors opened the train doors and allowed the waiting passengers to exit the train. I stood aside to allow Edward Lee and his two companions leave before me.

My day exploring Koka was similar to those spent exploring other cities. I put my hiking boots to good use. First I would first visit the city center, look at its stores and outdoor vendors, and peruse their merchandise. I asked about the city's other market places, and explored them. Now, however, thanks to my talks with Jim, I also began noticing the different types and numbers of lorries, the places they would unload, as well as the geographies relating the markets, the train stations, and the city highways.

I would bargain for small dishes of the local food whenever I felt hungry. The local churma and other sweets tasted better than average, perhaps due to the presence of large number of students from the city's numerous schools and institutes.

I also noted a larger than usual number of dogs around the city. Some of them were simply pariah dogs, which had been half-domesticated and served as residence's watch dogs. Many others appeared entirely feral, mongrelized breeds surviving on garbage and whatever else they could scavenge, living or dead. I saw some of them clustered in packs, but they usually stayed well away from the populated neighborhoods.

About an hour before I was due back at the train, I sought out the address Jim had given me. It was well away from the center of town, and from the city's two jewelry districts. It was at the side of a small square which had no large or interesting shops. There were only a few outdoor vendors, who were not doing much business.

The address of the dealer was located in an alley, rather than a full street. I could not immediately find the correct door number, so I stopped to reread the slip of paper Jim had given me.

I heard or sensed rushing movement from behind me, and immediately shifted my body. The club hit my shoulder, instead of my head, but was enough to knock me to my knees. I ignored the instinctual urge to attempt to rise, and instead dropped my body flat upon the ground. This caused the second swing of the club to avoid my head and body entirely, and put my assailant temporarily off balance.

I spread my palms on the ground for traction, pulled in my knees and then struck out my legs with full force. The soles of my boots hit my attacker's shins, who shouted a large curse, but did not topple over. I quickly drew in my legs again, separated them slightly, and struck them out again. This time I scissored them shut tightly around the legs of my attacker.

Then I began rolling over. The first roll was easy, since its direction tipped my attacker to his knees, and then pushed his upper body and face down onto the ground. The second roll took more effort, since further folding would run contrary to my his body's geometry. I had to use my arms for leverage, and twisted my trunk. I heard my attacker scream again. This time the scream was louder, longer and more high-pitched. Then I heard the crunch of breaking bone, and his body went limp and silent.

I did an additional twist, but received no response. I disentangled our bodies, got up and dusted myself off. I checked my clothing and my belt, and all seemed unharmed.

The entire fight had taken no more than a few minutes. No one else had entered the alley. I left the alley after I again rechecked myself.

Only a handful of merchants now remained in the square, plus a few men dressed in red sherwanis. The most prominent figure, however, was a tall man wearing a white suit and a tan Stetson hat. Jim Broadacres waited about 20 feet away. Susan was about a dozen feet behind him, dressed in a light green dress with a dark green belt. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and she wore a pair of jade earrings.

'I'm mighty glad to see that it's you walking out of that alley, Angus,' said Jim. 'When I heard that last scream, I was afraid that something fatal had happened to you. I didn't want anything like that to happen.'

'I'd given strict orders,' he continued, 'that I wanted you brought to me and Susie alive. I want to you be alive and healthy, and for you to stay that way - at least for a while.'

Jim smiled at me. So did Susan, first sweetly, then hungrily.

Even at that distance, I could see that her glittering eyes were now more grey than blue.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

'I apologize for disrupting your plan,' I said to Jim, 'but wouldn't it create a bit of bother, for anything to happen out here in the open, in front of witnesses?'

'That's no problem at all, son,' he replied. 'One thing every good businessman knows, is to always have a Plan B ready, in case your Plan A doesn't pan out.'

Jim snapped his fingers, and the merchants still in the square started packing up their wares and leaving. At the same time, the other men milling around turned towards me. Some grasped the handles of their knives. The men varied in height and dress. Several had clubs, but fortunately, none of them carried anything that could be used as a shield. My main worry was that two of them were wearing red turbans, which indicated they might be Rajputs.

'In fact,' added Jim, 'a really good businessman also has a Plan C ready, just in case.' He pulled back the bottom of his jacket, and showed the gun holster hooked to his belt. The gun handle was black. I suspected it was a war surplus Luger, smaller and easier to handle than a Colt 45.

For one absurd moment, my mind flashed back to a scene in a movie I had watched with other members of the University Film Society. It was _The Savage Guns,_ a Western starring Richard Basehart as a white-hatted gunslinger, who had pulled his vest back to expose his pistol in exactly the same manner.

The most interesting feature of the Western was that all the dialog was dubbed, since it had been filmed in Europe and virtually all of the other actors were Europeans. The original title of the film was _Tierra Brutal_. During the buffet and discussion after the showing, Professor Grimsby had stated that anyone who had travelled a bit and knew a little geology would immediately recognize that the scenes in the so-called "Sonora Desert" had been filmed in Spain.

'I wonder how well the American market will react to "Paella Westerns?" joked Grimsby, and we both laughed.

My mind flashed into the present, when I heard Sam mention Grimsby's name.

'…one of my experts I use for evaluating potential oil sites' I heard Jim say. 'Imagine my surprise when I called the University and found out that there was nobody named Ruth Grimsby listed as a student there. In fact, the only Ruth Grimsby in the entire University is the professor's wife, who is 60 years old.'

'Now. Angus,' he said, 'I don't take offense if somebody lies to me. In fact, it's all part of the game in the business world. What I can't accept, is when somebody lies to my little Susie. You hurt her feelings by turning her down, and, to add insult to injury, you claimed that a 60-year old lady was better than her. That I can't let you get away with. It's a matter of family honor.'

'Now, you won't be hurt too bad, not if you cooperate,' he continued. 'Like I said, you're only a couple of funerals away from being a Lord. Susie thinks you look nice, and I like the idea of having grandchildren who can mingle with royalty. If you go along with us, you might even find it a very pleasurable experience – most of the time.'

'But first, you have to be taught a lesson, so you'll always know who is the boss.' Jim gestured towards the men, and they started moving towards me. They were all still a few dozen feet away, which would give me space to maneuver.

'Parava,' I shouted at them, the Hindu command to halt. 'Before you start, don't you want to get my money belt, my paise belte, before it gets all bloody?

'They turned their heads toward Jim, who looked a bit puzzled by my response. He shrugged his shoulders, and held out his hand for his men to stop.'

'Thank you,' I said. I took off my jacket, and reached inside my shirt for a small wooden hand attached to a series of coins I had specially made. I carried them inside a hollow leather belt wrapped around my waist. The money belt's interior had a lining of thin but strong and flexible metal,

I drew out the metal discs slowly and steadily. A first glance, from a distance, they appeared to be several dozen 50-rupee silver coins, somehow connected together in a single chain about ten feet long.

Actually, what I was uncoiling was a special urumi of my own design. I had commissioned a Bombay metalsmith to forge and assemble it, after I had learned how to handle the standard version of the weapon. An urumi is basically a long and flexible sword, consisting of one or more blades of thin metal with sharpened edges. For a trained user, it is an excellent mid-range melee weapon. For an untrained user, it poses as big a danger to himself as to his enemies.

The urumi's extreme flexibility even allowed it to strike an opponent standing behind a pillar, or close to the corner of a building. In such situations, however, although the curved blade could hit the person, it did so with a slap, rather than a cut.

The urumi I designed eliminated this impediment. It was not simply a long flexible blade made from a single piece of metal. It was a string of sharpened steel discs, whose edges were joined together by moveable metal links. When swung properly, its cutting edge could wrap around a tree or the corner of a building, and slice into the back or side of an enemy. A Bombay butcher had sold me the unskinned carcasses of wild boar to test prototypes of my new weapon.

I used sharpened steel discs an inch and a half wide which, at first glance, appeared to be old and tarnished silver rupees. The end piece of the urumi, however, looked like a gold coin, flecked with bits of colored glass. This was also a disc of sharpened steel, but the metalsmith included additional minerals during smelting to make it appear yellow. In addition, at the last stage of construction, he had imbedded small crystals of quartz and colored durable minerals on the outer layers. When any light hit the crystals of quarts, topaz, and corundum, the disc would sparkle with small colored beams of blue, green and red. It was eye-catching, very pretty, and – most important - extremely distracting to any opponent.

When I had fully extracted my urumi from its holder, I carefully held the center of the gold disc with the fingers of my left hand. I began to sway slightly, giving the hanging loop of discs some initial momentum.

Most of the men looked at me in a puzzled and suspicious manner. They realized that it was obviously not a money belt, but were unsure of exactly what it was. The two Rajput, Punjab fighters who usually had some training with urumis, as well as with traditional swords and knives, looked wary instead of puzzled. One looked around, as if searching to find anything that could be used as a shield, the best defense against a urumi. The merchants, however, had taken all their braziers and metal platters away when they left.

As my looped urumi gained momentum, it began swaying in wider loops. I slowly moving sideways towards Jim. I preferred to be facing him, rather than the hired thugs, when the action started.

When the loop gained sufficient momentum, I let go of the golden disc. I swung the urumi around lazy-looking, horizontal figure eights. It travelled at around at the lowest speed which would still keep it up in the air, so it did not look threatening – except to the Rajputs. The two gave each other looks like they were mentally debating the merits of alternative employment.

Jim had first looked puzzled, then he broke into a large grin.

'Well, lookee here,' he said. 'Angus, son, you are full of surprises. I've seen bullwhips, and I've seen belts make out of silver dollars. Neither are them are uncommon in Texas. But I have to admit, that this is the first time that I've ever seen a bullwhip made out of silver dollars.' He was evidently never seen an urumi.

While Jim was talking, I stepped a bit closer, and speeded up the swing of the urumi.

Jim chuckled, and turned his head towards his daughter.

'Susie,' he said,' you remember everything I taught you about fighting against somebody with a bullwhip?'

Susan nodded her head.

'The principle's still the same, darling,' he continued, 'whether it's made of rawhide or silver dollars.'

I speeded up my swing and took another step towards him.

'You simply reach out, grab it, and then pull him in,' he said, 'like a big ole bass at the end of fishing line.'

I whipped my wrist, sending a wave of additional energy to speed up the end of the urumi.

'Just like this…,' he said with a smile, as he snapped his open right hand out. As the discs hit his open palm, he enclosed his fist around the end of the urumi.

Jim's smile turned to a look of surprise and puzzlement, as the urumi continued sailing on past his hand. At the end of the swing, I grabbed the stick with both hands and knelt down on one knee to bring the reverse swing trajectory less than a yard above ground level.

Jim did not immediately notice my movement, because he was still staring at his fist, wondering how he had missed grabbing the urumi. Then the top portion of his hand containing four fingers dropped off and fell onto the ground. Very pale pink blood began spurting out of the end of what remained of his hand.

Jim then realized that he had, indeed, managed to grab the urumi, and also that it was also razor sharp.

Meanwhile, I used all the strength in both my shoulders to swing the urumi against the back of Jim's knees.

Jim stared another second at the half of his hand which remained connected to his wrist. His look of surprise now turned into one of fury, and his eyes became completely white. He snarled in fury and went into a slight crouch, as a prelude to leaping at me and tearing out my throat with his good left hand.

Simultaneously, the sharpened edge of my urumi snapped against the back of his legs, slightly above the knees. I did not let the weapon continue its swing and wrap around Jim's legs. Instead, as soon as the discs made struck, I immediately pulled weapon back towards me, the same instant that Jim started to spring out of his crouch.

The result was similar to a quick succession of large scalpels slicing through the muscles, tendons, and bones at the back of both his knees.

Instead of springing forward, Jim's body simply collapsed as his partially severed knees gave way.

I saw a rushing movement on my right side. Two of Jim's thugs ran towards me with their gurkha raised high for downward swings.

I continued to pull back the urumi towards me, as I rose up and pivoted my entire body counter-clockwise, spinning the weapon in nearly a full circle. The end of my sword swung along the unprotected stomach of the nearest thug. He dropped his knife and used both his hands to try to hold in the intestines spilling out of his belly.

The other thug stopped in his tracks, and I returned my attention to Jim.

His snarl had turned into a screeching howl. He was lying upon the ground, but had managed to twist his body, so as to allow his left had to grab the handle of the luger. He twisted even more, and managed to pull the pistol out of the holster.

Meanwhile, I stepped around to his side. The swing of my blade through the thug's stomach muscles had slowed its speed, and allowed me to easily tilt the swing of the urumi from horizontal to vertical.

Jim extended his left arm and started to swing the luger over, to aim it at me.

I brought the urumi down full force upon the middle of his arm. His severed forearm and left hand fell upon the ground, with his fist still tightly grasping the luger.

Hugh amounts of pale blood spurted from the stump of Jim's left arm. His formerly white jacket was now mostly a glistening pink.

As I pulled the urumi back out into the air, I spun around and twisted my hand to make the blade return to a horizontal swing. The end sliced through the throat of the second thug, who had unwisely decided to continue his attack.

All the other men had stood still during the initial three encounters, which seemed to take less than three seconds. As the third body hit the ground, I stepped towards them, now swinging the urumi in a slow horizontal eight. They all simultaneously decided to leave in a hurry. Their decision may have been influenced by the sound of a gun firing. A bullet whizzed by my ear and hit on of them in his shoulder. His body spun slightly, but he did not slow down his exit.

I turned around and saw Susan standing next to Sam's body. She had picked up the luger, which was still held in the death grip of her father's hand. She had tucked the end of his forearm under her shoulder and was aiming the gun at me like it was the end of a rifle. There were pale pink splotches over the right side of her dress.

She was snarling, and her eyes were now completely white.

Like father, like daughter.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen**

I saw Susan's right elbow shift slightly closer to her body. I sensed that she was putting pressure on her father's trigger finger, so I leaned to the left. There were three loud "pops," in rapid succession, and I felt the air pressure from at least one of the 9 millimetre bullets as it hummed past my ear.

During our dinner conversation, Jim had told me how he had trained Susan to be an excellent shot. He taught her skeet shooting, took her with him on duck and quail hunts, and showed her how to take apart, clean and reassemble a shotgun. If Susan had been using a shotgun, rather than a pistol locked in the hand of her father, I would have been killed by the first shot.

Fortunately, a bullet is much smaller than the radius of a blast of shotgun pellets.

In addition, it was unlikely that Susan had any training in shooting a pistol locked in the grasp of a dead man's had. The Luger probably also had a hair trigger, personally adjusted to her father's reflexes. For a true shot, Susan would need not only to accurately aim the pistol, but also to correlate it with the precise amount and timing of pressure her trigger finger needed to exert upon her father's trigger finger.

Unfortunately, in order to get near enough to Susan to use my urumi, I had to make myself into a larger - and much easier to hit - target.

Distraction became the order of the day.

I was already swinging my urumi in slow, lazy-eight horizontal pattern. I gave my wrist an additional flick towards the end of each swing, making the golden disc jiggle a bit. It sent off more random colored flashes reflecting the light of the setting sun. Since Susan's eyes were now all-white, it was hard to discern any movement. The tilt of her head, however, seemed to change slightly at the end of each swing, impeding a steady aim.

I also advanced toward Susan at an irregular, swaying pace. Twisting my upper body, just as she appeared to start pulling the trigger again, made her waste two more bullets.

'Sam!' I shouted, making her glance to the side and waste another bullet.

'He certainly gave you a very nice upbringing,' I said, as I increased the speed of the urumi's swing.

'I was particularly impressed by the fact that he gave you such a large amount of personal attention,' I said.

I shifted my upper body, an instant before I heard her gun off another shot.

'My own father,' I said, 'he was much too involved with his business to give any of us children much of his time or attention.' As I took another step towards her, I further increased the speed of my urumi.

'But every great once in a while,' I continued, 'he did find the time to bounce me on his knee, and sing a little tune that his father had sung to him, and that that his father had learned from my great-grandfather.'

'Would you like to hear it?,' I said, as I twisted to avoid another bullet.

There were now only two paces between Susan's body and the reach of my urumi. I altered its swing from a horizontal trajectory, so that the middle part of the swing dipped down to belt level.

'Dance tae yer daddy, ma bonnie laddie,' I began in a sing-song chant.

'Dance tae yer daddy, ma bonnie lamb.'

The gun fired another shot.

I advanced another pace, and put more effort into the swing.

'An ye'll get a fishie, in a little dishie.'

One more shot.

Susan was now within the range of my urumi, but I wanted to take the time for a closer look at her eyes. The opportunity for an impassive, close up examination of the eyes of any angry vampire would not be likely to occur very often. Both her eyes were both almost completely white, but I could still discern the outline of each one's iris and pupil. In addition, their edges were discolored with bulging pale pink veins.

'Ye'll get a fishie,…' I said, accelerating my urumi.

'…when the boat… comes…,' I continued.

Susan's gun barrel was only a few feet away from my head. I could see directly down the gun barrel, when she pulled the trigger.

'…hame.'

Simultaneously, there was a dull 'click,' as the Luger's firing pin snapped down on the now-empty chamber. Susan stared a moment, and had probably just decided to throw down the gun and leap at me, when the urumi struck her neck.

I stepped back and to the side. I succeeded in avoiding the spray of pale pink blood which spurted out when her head fell off her neck.

Susan's neck muscles and upper spine had slowed the speed of the urumi, so I let the end of it glide down to the ground. I looked around for some light rag to clean the edges of the urumi, than remembered Sam's advice about always having a fallback plan.

I put down the handle of the urumi, and walked over to pick up the dead dacoit's Kukri. I returned to Susan, then walked over to Sam's body, which I examined from a few feet away. It had stopped bleeding, and there was no movement.

'Sam,' I said, as I carefully got closer, 'I very much appreciate everything that you taught me. I think that it is a shame, that you had to die, without being able to say goodbye to your loving daughter.'

'The least I can do,' I continued, 'is to allow you to give her one last kiss goodbye.'

I was holding the hair on the back of Susan's head with my left hand. I lowered her face down so that her lips touched Sam's.

Sam issued a loud howl, as his upper torso sprang up and his truncated arms tried to grab me.

I was holding the Gurkha knife in my right hand. I cut off Sam's head.

'… and I want to thank you, especially, Sam' I added, 'for explaining to me the meaning of the American phrase, "playing possum."'

I gave the killing field a very quick glance, but saw no other potential source of danger. My adrenaline ebbed and I felt a bit tired, but also mentally exhilarated. I pulled the handkerchief from the break pocket of Sam's jacket and wiped my brow. Then I used the cloth to clean most of the blood off my urumi, and put it in a leather pouch I carried in my jacket.

I searched Sam's pockets and took out his wallet. I saw a small handbag lying of the ground near Susan's initial position. I opened it and extracted a leather billfold containing her identification papers, which I also put in my pocket.

The sound of high-pitched whines and whistles reminded me that the smell of fresh blood would also attract the packs of feral dogs which roamed the city

I took a slower look around the empty market, to judge which direction the loudest sounds were coming from, and which by which street I should leave.

Two figures, one clad entirely in green and one in dark red, were standing by the one of the street corners. They were old Mr. Sheng and his granddaughter. Both had impassive faces. I could not discern anything about their intentions; whether or not they were to be my next opponents.

The granddaughter carried a fan, which she opened and lifted to cover her and her grandfather's face, while they exchanged words.

The young girl lowered her fan, nodded and closed her fan.

Gongzhu walked across the market square and approached me. She was wearing a dark red silk jacket with a mandarin collar, and matching pair of trousers. The collar partly exposed a wide golden choker, embellished with a large piece of jade. Her long hair was tied into braids. They were wrapped tightly around her head, held in place by long metal hair pins.

She looked older than when I had first seen her. I also noticed that the side mounts of her fan were metal, rather than bamboo. It was a fighting fan.

'I bring you a message from my grandfather,' she said.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen**

** "**Gongzhu paused a moment," said MacTavish, 'and then stared directly into my eyes. Hers had a very pronounced epicanthic fold, but the most unusual feature was their color. They were bright green, which, according to some legends meant she was a descendant of the Lost Roman Legion. Her pupils, however, also contained tiny flecks of yellow."

'Grandfather wishes me to convey his apologies for not speaking to you directly,' she said. 'A neurological disorder has paralyzed the left side of his face, and he feels very self-conscious when talking with strangers.'

'He wanted you to know, however, that he was very impressed by your technique. He says he had seen such fluid movement since Hong Kong played the visiting Marylebone Cricket Club in 1951.'

I turned towards the old man, whose face now had a crooked smile. He gave a small bow, which I interpreted as "well played, young man." I returned a small bow of thanks.

'I, however, regard your technique as sloppy and amateurish,' she continued, in a much sharper tone of voice.

'You should consider yourself lucky to still be alive. When you turned to take out the first human, you left your back completely open. If Susan had any real fighting experience, she would have launched herself at your unprotected rear, instead of stopping to pick up her father's gun. You were also lucky, because her father's hand muscles were locked around the gun. She is, or rather, was, a very good shot. She had more than enough skill to take you down with the first bullet, if she had not had to deal with her father's arm.'

'And, once she realized her aim was impaired, she should have immediately discarded the weapon. Instead of continuing to try to shoot you, she should have simply lunged at your body, while the urumi was at the end of one of its swings.'

'Luck,' she continued, 'is the only reason you are still alive. It had nothing to do with your skill or your training. In my opinion, Lieren, you do not deserve grandfather's praise.'

'Nevertheless,' I said, 'I am very grateful for his opinion. When the Emperor Napoleon was selecting the general who would lead his troops in the next campaign, he would closely query his advisors about each of the prospective candidates' abilities and weaknesses. And, he would always be sure to ask: "Est-il heureux?"'

'Anybody who depends on luck to win a fight,' she said, 'sooner or later – usually sooner – winds up dead. In this case, you managed to wind up alive, and I did not have to run the risk of getting any blood on my new outfit.'

At least that answered the question of whether she and her grandfather had been tracking me, or the Broadacres.

'I know why they wanted to kill me,' I said. 'What was your quarrel with them?'

'That's really none of your business,' she said, and then looked at her grandfather. 'I can only tell you that Mister Broadacres represented certain business interests, in addition to the oil company. They perceive Britain's withdrawal from Asia as opening up previously closed markets, in which they now wish to participate – and dominate.'

'For a very long time,' she said, 'my people have been forced to accept a certain accommodation with the British and your empire. It was all but terminated after their defeat by Japan. We do not wish a similar arrangement with the Americans, whom we believe will be even greedier and less open to accommodation than the British.'

'Broadacres was not simply negotiating a split in oil facilities between the British and the Americans in Persia. He was also heading further east, to negotiate a transfer of other British facilities in China and Japan. My people feel that the facilities have, in effect, already been transferred, so there is nothing to negotiate. It would not be in our interests to have him around, poking his nose into what is now our business.'

'My grandfather and I were sent to persuade him from going further east,' she said. 'He is a difficult man to persuade. You saved us some trouble.'

'Lucky you,' I said. 'Was it part of your plan also to persuade Susan?'

'Of course,' she said. 'You evidently have not had that much experience with White Court vampires. Even if she was not being groomed to take over her father's role, she still would have presented a major threat. After we had taken out her father, she would have let nothing stop her in her quest to avenge his death – just as I would let nothing stop me from ever avenging my grandfather's death.'

'So, I gather that you are also being groomed to take over the family business, so to speak?' I said.

'In more ways than one,' she answered. 'I just spent three years in America at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, getting a degree in Electrical Engineering. In a few months, I'll be in Philadelphia, spending two years at the Wharton School, learning how to use computers to modernize the family business.'

'I got straight A's, and would prefer to go to Harvard. My older brother is already on the Business School faculty – but it still doesn't accept any women! It thinks the only thing we can do is "fashion design."'

She glanced over at Susan's body. It's open neck was festooned with a swarm of buzzing black flies.

'Even if Susan wasn't part of the assignment, I still would have enjoyed taking her out. I've seen dozens of blonde bitches like her at undergraduate parties, students from Radcliffe and Vassar. They come in with Negro boyfriends, to show how liberal they are. Then they always ask me if I am hungry, and would I like a bowl of "fried lice." I'll probably get two more years of it, from the students at Bryn Mawr.'

She walked over to Susan's head, reached down, and pulled the jade earrings off the two ears without opening their clasps.

"I was looking forward to wearing these,' she said. Then she tossed them to me.

'Here,' she told me. 'They now belong to you. Spoils of war.'

I nodded thanks, and put them in my pocket.

'Let me give you something else, Mister MacTavish,' she said, 'some very important advice. If you are fighting a mixed group of vampires and humans, always take out all the vampires first, and then the humans. And, never, never – under any circumstances - turn your back on a vampire while you are in the killing field. Never.'

Just then I heard the whistle of an approaching pack of feral dogs, coming from the direction of her grandfather. I turned around to look at the old man, and suddenly found myself flying through the air. I curled into a tuck and roll when I hit the ground, and put my hand at the top of my boot for immediate access to my trench knife.

I was now crouching about ten feet away from Susie, who was simply standing with her arms akimbo, giving me a look of disdain. She gave no sign that she had exerted herself in any manner. Her green eyes, however, were gleaming.

It finally began to dawn on me, that I had met a Jade Court vampire.

'Like I said, stupid and amateurish. Doesn't even have enough sense to take good advice.'

She walked back to her grandfather.

Simultaneously, a pack of feral dogs led by large male with matted brown and white fur came down the street to the corner where grandfather was standing. Some were already whining and growling at him, when his granddaughter approached the pack.

Gongzhu quickly opened her fan, and then shut it with a loud snap.

The alpha male leading the pack stared at her, and then stopped snarling and stepped aside. The rest of the pack parted in the middle, giving Gongzhu and the old man a clear path up the street. I thought of Moses waving his staff and parting the Red Sea.

I had a few seconds before the pack closed rank and turned their attention back to the scent of fresh blood. I picked up Jim's Stetson, in addition to my jacket, and left the market square by one of the side streets.

The sun was setting and the moon was already beginning to show, as I made my way to the bridge which crossed the Chambal River. I put the Stetson on my head, and walked onto the bridge. I was the only Western face in sight, and most of the people around were looking at me.

At the middle of the bridge, I took off the Stetson. I held it by the rim, and then spun it off like a giant chakra. It sailed upward at a 45 degree angle, high into the sky. As I anticipated, everyone was now looking at the hat. When it reached the height of its ascent, I reached into my pocket, surreptitiously removed the two billfolds and dropped them into the river. They hit the surface of the water and sank unnoticed, with barely a sound, while the Stetson was still descending.

My initial plan was to blend into the crowd and complete my crossing of the bridge, before the Stetson hit the surface of the river.

The sight of the rising moon, however, and the background noises of feral dogs fighting over fresh meat, combined to create a feeling of exhilaration. As the hat landed upon the water, I burst out into a loud song.

'The moon is bright, all through the night…"

I clapped four times!

'Deep in the heart of Koka.'

'Pariah dogs howl, they growl and yowl…"

Four more loud claps!

'Deep in the heart of Koka.'

Most of the crowd was now watching me again. They looked at me as if I were mad. Perhaps I was.

Mad, but not stupid. I took a circuitous route back to the railway station, doubling back several times, to assure myself that I was not being followed.


End file.
